Ui$fvGrsity  of  California, 

:  H£  LIBRARY   OF 

U     FRANCIS     LIEBER, 

Frofes-or  of  History  nijd  Law  in  Columbia  College,  New  York 


THE  GIFT  OP 


MICHAEL    REESE 

Of  San  Fran, 
1ST  3. 


(JQ        tW       V 


( 


c. 


"^^ 


WOMEN'S  SUFFRAGE. 


WOMEN'S    SUFFRAGE; 


REFORM  AGAINST  NATURE. 


HORACE  BUSHNELL. 
\\ 


JTEW    JORK  : 

CHARLES    SCRIBNER   AND    COMPANY. 

1869. 


Entered  according  to  Act  of  Congress,  in  the  year  1869, 

By  CHARLES  SCRIBNER  &  Co., 

In  the  Clerk's  Office  of  the  District  Court  of  the  United  States  for 
the  Southern  District  of  New  York. 


TO    THE   PUBLIC. 


It  is  not  to  be  supposed  that  this  little  volume  has  finished 
the  argument  of  a  subject  so  large,  and,  in  former  times,  so  entirely 
unattempted.  If  it  brings  the  question  to  some  fixed  issue,  taking 
it  away  from  the  mere  chance-working  it  has  had  hitherto,  it 
will  have  done  the  service  proposed.  And  if  the  projected  re- 
form is  totally  different  from  all  other  reforms,  in  the  times  gone 
by,  in  the  fact  that  it  is  a  reform  against  nature — an  attempt  to 
make  trumpets  out  of  flutes,  and  sun-flowers  out  of  violets,  the 
discovery  can  not  be  difficult,  and  it  will  save  us  much  trouble 
if  it  is  made  soon. 

I  take  pleasure  in  acknowledging  my  obligations  to  Rev.  Mr. 
Alger,  hi  his  book  on  the  Friendships  of  "Women,  for  a  good 
many  historic  facts  and  references  that  would  otherwise  have 
cost  me  much  labor.  Also,  to  Rev.  George  B.  Bacon,  of  Orange, 
New  Jersey,  for  the  history  of  "Women's  Suffrage  in  that  State. 

I  do  not  propose  to  continue  this  discussion,  but  to  abide  the 
criticisms  laid  upon  me  with  what  of  patience  I  am  able. 


ACKNOWLEDGMENT. 


For  once  I  will  dare  to  break  open  one  of  the 
customary  seals  of  silence,  by  inscribing  this 
little  book  to  the  woman  I  know  best  and 
most  thoroughly  ;  having  been  overlapped,  as 
it  were,  and  curtained  in  the  same  conscious- 
ness for  the  last  thirty-six  years.  If  she  is 
offended  that  I  do  it  without  her  consent,  I 
hope  she  may  get  over  the  offense  shortly, 
as  she  has  a  great  many  others  that  were 
worse.  She  has  been  with  me  in  many  weak- 
nesses  and  some  storms,  giving  strength  alike 
in  both ;  sharp  enough  to  see  my  faults,  faithful 
enough  to  expose  them,  and  considerate  enough 
to  do  it  wisely;  shrinking  never  from  loss,  or 
blame,  or  shame  to  be  encountered  in  any 
thing  right  to  be  done  ;  adding  great  and  high 
instigations — instigations  always  to  good,  and 
never  to  evil  mistaken  for  good  ;  forecasting 
always  things  bravest  and  best  to  be  done, 
and  supplying  inspirations  enough  to  have 


made  a  hero,  if  they  had  not  lacked  the  timber. 
If  I  have  done  any  thing  well,  she  has  been  the 
more  really  in  it  that  she  did  not  know  it,  and 
the  more  willingly  also  that  "having  her  part 
in  it  known  has  not  even  occurred  to  her ; 
compelling  me  thus  to  honor  not  less,  but 
more,  the  covert  glory  of  the  womanly  nature  ; 
even  as  I  obtain  a  distincter,  and  more  won- 
dering apprehension  of  the  divine  meanings, 
and  moistenings,  and  countless,  unbought  min- 
istries, it  contributes  to  this  otherwise  very 
dry  world. 

H.  B. 


CONTENTS. 


i. 

Page 

PRELIMINARY — QUESTION  STATED, 9 


II 
No  EIGHT  OF  SUFFRAGE  ABSOLUTE  IN  MAN  OR  WOMAN,         32 

III. 
WOMEN  NOT  CREATED  OR  CALLED  TO  GOVERN,      ....        49 

IY. 
SCRIPTURE  DOCTRINE  COINCIDES, 73 

V. 
SUBTLE  MISTAKES   OF  FEELING  AND  ARGUMENT,    ...        88 

VI. 
THE  REPORT  OF  HISTORY, 110 

YII. 
PROBABLE  EFFECTS, 134 

YIII. 

PROSPECTS  AND  POSSIBILITIES  OF  WOMEN.  .  164 


WOMEN'S    SUFFRAGE. 


i. 

PKELIMINARY.— QUESTION  STATED. 

IF  we  do  not  know  how  it  is,  or  why,  we  do  at 
least  know  the  fact^that  power  somehow  naturally 
runs  to  oppression.^  We  oppress  the  animals ;  we 
oppress  the  wild  untutored  species  of  our  own  race ; 
rulers  take  it  for  long  ages  as  their  divine  right 
to  oppress  their  subjects  ;  even  the  church  of  God 
has  been  a  mighty  hunter  of  its  people  in  the 
name  of  love ;  and  in  much  the  same  manner  it 
will  be  seen  that  the  whole  male  half  of  the  race, 
having  power  to  do  it,  have  been  piling  weights  of 
disability  and  depression  on  the  female  half.  Prob- 
ably it  can  not  be  said  that  man  has  undertaken 
purposely  to  be  the  oppressor  of  woman — he  would 
scorn  the  impeachment ;  protesting,  on  the  con- 
trary, his  natural  admirations,  his  zeal  to  serve  and 
protect,  the  profuseness  of  his  attentions,  and  the 
unstinted  tribute  of  respect  and  deference  he  is 
always  wont  to  render.  And  yet,  little  as  he 
means  it,  he  is  nevertheless  gravitating  steadily 


10 

toward  some  practice  of  wrong  against  the  sex ; 
laying  up  usages  that  are  oppressive,  maxims  un- 
just, laws  of  really  despotic  mastership ;  all,  it  would 
seem,  because  the  wrong  is  in  him  and,  having  the 
power,  must  needs  be  somehow  issued  in  the  deed ; 
even  though  he  disavows  it  and  protests  he  would 
not  have  it. 

In  this  manner  it  results  that  the  lot  of  woman 
comes  to  be  a  lot  of  abridgment  and  suppression, 
much  more  commonly  than  we  have  been  ob- 
serving ourselves.  As  our  attention  is  called  to 
the  matter,  and  we  become  more  completely 
awake  to  it,  we  are  surprised  to  find  how  many 
disadvantages  are  laid  upon  the  condition  of 
woman  that  no  principle  of  equity  permits,  and 
no  pretense  of  reason  or  necessity  justifies.  It 
does  not  surprise  us  that,  in  the  savage  and  bar- 
barous forms  of  society,  she  is  reduced  to  the  lot 
of  a  menial  or  drudge  and  well  nigh  to  a  beast  of 
burden ;  or  that  she  is  bought  and  sold  for  mar- 
riage, apart  from  any  right  of  consent,  and  con- 
signed in  this  manner  to  a  husband  whose  power 
is  a  power  of  life  and  death.  All  such  monstrous 
kinds  of  wrong  we  expect  to  encounter  in  the  bar- 
baric conditions  of  society.  But  the  real  wonder 
now  forcing  itself  upon  our  discovery,  is  that  our 
own  deliberately  adjusted  laws  and  institutions 
are  so  often  unequal,  as  regards  the  property  rights 
of  men  and  women  and  the  redress  of  their  per- 
sonal wrongs  ;  that  women  are  so  often  excluded, 


THE   REFORM   AGAINST   NATURE.  11 

whether  by  law  or  public  usage,  from  modes  of 
employment  and  productive  industry  that  are 
equally  appropriate  or  even  more  appropriate  to 
them  ;  that  having  thus  only  about  one-third  the 
number  of  employments  that  men  have,  they  are 
penned,  as  it  were,  before  that  third,  and  create  a 
competition  that  reduces  their  wages  to  the  small- 
est pittance — penned  of  course  for  unrighteous 
prey,  in  whatever  manner  the  terrible  stringency 
of  their  lot,  may  be  said  in  a  sense  to  compel. 
Looking  over  this  whole  chapter  of  our  civil  and 
social  state,  we  are  mortified  to  find  how  largely  it 
is  a  chapter  of  wrongs,  or  of  only  half  vindicated 
rights.  At  one  time  we  get  angry,  at  another  we 
can  do  nothing  but  take  our  doses  of  shame  in 
silence.  But  the  anger  and  the  shame  are  both 
salutary ;  for  they  are  stirring  us  up  to  a  more  and 
more  determined  purpose  of  redress.  The  true 
basis  of  relationship  between  the  sexes,  is  going 
now  to  be  thoroughly  investigated,  and  we  shall  not 
rest  again  till  it  is  cleared  and  established. 

Of  course  there  is  nothing  to  be  gained  by  any 
overstatement  of  the  wrongs  of  woman,  or  by  any 
demands  that  exceed  the  proportion  of  their 
powers  and  conditions.  It  is  nothing  that  they 
can  not  get  as  high  wages  as  men,  when  they  can 
not  do  as  much,  or  do  it  as  well.  It  is  nothing 
that  they  can  not  get  the  wages  of  rugged  and 
dangerous  employments,  in  such  as  are  gentle  and 
delicate.  It  is  nothing  that  in  great  poverty,  sin- 


12 

gle  women  or  women  having  families  are  brought 
into  conditions  of  unspeakable  severity  ;  the  same 
is  true  of  men,  and  we  do  not  expect  them  to  sink 
mournfully  or  moaningly  under  their  lot,  but  to 
bravely  bear,  and  dig,  and  climb  till  they  are  free. 
No  better  chance  for  poor  women  can  ever  be 
asked ;  or  if  it  is  they  will  never  get  it ;  and  it  will 
always  be  possible,  both  for  poor  discouraged  men 
to  justify  rushing  into  the  very  worst  and  vilest 
trades  to  get  their  bread,  and  for  poor  discouraged 
women  to  justify  their  imbrutement  in  a  specially 
disgusting  livelihood  permitted  by  their  sex.  The 
only  way,  in  all  such  unfavoring  conditions  and 
straits  of  peril,  both  for  women  and  for  men,  and  for 
one  as  truly  as  for  the  other,  is  to  suffer  patiently 
and  fight  bravely ;  and  thank  God  women  are  at 
least  equal  in  this  kind  of  capacity.  Again,  it  is 
nothing  that  women,  sewing  women  for  example, 
are  not  helped  directly  in  the  matter  of  their  wages 
by  legal  enactment,  any  more  than  that  men  are 
not — there  is  no  such  possibility  as  a  legally  ap- 
pointed rate  of  wages ;  market  price  is  the  only 
scale  of  earning  possible  for  women  as  for  men. 
The  only  help  that  can  be  given  them  is  a  wider 
range  of  employments,  and  personal  additions  of 
character  and  capacity,  that  will  put  their  services 
in  a  higher  rate  of  estimation.  Education  more 
advanced  will  give  a  more  advanced  capacity,  and 
the  educated  eye  and  hand  will  do  a  better  and 
more  valuable  service.  Besides,  the  rate  of  wages 


THE  KEFOEM  AGAINST  NATURE.  13 

depends  in  a  considerable  degree,  on  the  amount 
of  personality  in  the  workers,  and  the  estimate 
had  of  their  quality.  If  women  have  sometimes 
been  depressed  by  sex  legislation,  they  will  not 
have  the  damage  repaired  by  any  beneficiary  sex 
legislation  that  gives  them  artificial  and  really 
forced  advantages. 

"We  have  made  a  good  and  right  beginning  al- 
ready in  the  matter  of  education,  and  the  benefi- 
cent results  that  come  along  with  our  new  codes 
of  training  are  even  a  surprise  to  us  ;  compelling 
us  to  rectify  a  great  many  foolish  prejudices  that 
we  supposed  to  be  sanctioned  as  inevitable  wis- 
dom, by  long  ages  of  experience.  The  joining, 
for  example,  of  the  two  sexes  in  common  studies 
and  a  common  college  life — what  could  be  more 
un-university-like,  and,  morally  speaking,  more 
absurd  $/) And,  as  far  as  the  young  women  are 
concerned,  what  could  be  more  unwomanly  and 
really  more  improper !  I  confess,  with  some  mor- 
tification, that  when  the  thing  was  first  done,  I 
was  not  a  little  shocked  even  by  the  rumor  of  it. 
But  when,  by  and  by,  some  fifteen  years  ago,  I 
drifted  into  Oberlin  and  spent  a  Sunday  there,  I 
had  a  new  chapter  opened  that  has  cost  me  the 
loss  of  a  considerable  cargo  of  wise  opinions,  all 
scattered  in  loose  wreck  never  again  to  be  gath- 
ered. I  found  that  the  old  church  idea  of  a  col- 
lege (collegium),  where  youths  of  the  male  sex 
were  gathered  to  the  cloisters  of  their  male  teach- 


14 

ers,  the  monks,  and  where  any  sight  and  thought 
of  a  woman  approaching  the  place  was  conceived 
to  be  a  profanation,  was  itself  a  dismal  imposture, 
and  a  kind  of  total  lie  against  every  thing  most 
beneficent  in  the  bisexual  order  of  our  existence. 
I  learned,  for  the  first  time,  what  it  means  that 
the  sexes,  not  merely  as  by  two-and-two,  but  as  a 
large  open  scale  of  society,  have  a  complementary 
relation,  existing  as  helps  to  each  other,  and  that 
humanity  is  a  disjointed  creature  running  only  to 
waste  and  disorder,  where  they  are  put  so  far 
asunder  as  to  leave  either  one  or  the  other,  in  a 
properly  monastic  and  separate  state.  Here  were 
gathered  for  instruction  large  numbers  of  pupils, 
male  and  female,  pursuing  their  studies  together 
in  the  same  classes  and  lessons,  under  the  same 
teachers ;  the  young  women  deriving  a  more  pro- 
nounced and  more  positive  character  in  their  men- 
tal training  from  association  with  young  men  in 
their  studies,  and  the  young  men  a  closer  and 
more  receptive  refinement  and  a  more  deli- 
cate habitual  respect  to  what  is  in  personal 
life,  from  their  associations  with  young  women. 
The  discipline  of  the  institution,  watchful  as 
it  properly  should  be,  was  yet  a  kind  of  si- 
lence, and  was  practically  null  —  being  carried 
on  virtually  by  the  mutually  qualifying  and  re 
straining  powers  of  the  sexes  over  each  other. 
There  was  scarcely  a  single  case  of  discipline,  or 
almost  never  more  than  one,  occurring  in  a  year. 


THE  REFORM  AGAINST  NATURE.         15 

In  particular  there  was  no  such  thing  known  as 
an  esprit  du  corps  in  deeds  of  mischief,  no  con- 
spiracies against  order  and  the  faculty,  no  bold 
prominence  in  evil  aspired  to,  no  lying  proudly 
done  for  the  safety  of  the  clan,  no  barbarities  of 
hazing  perpetrated.  And  so  the  ancient,  tradi- 
tional, hell-state  of  college  life,  and  all  the  im- 
mense ruin  of  character  propagated  by  the  club- 
law  of  a  stringently  male  or  monastic  association, 
was  totally  escaped  and  put  away.  What  we  see 
occurring  always,  where  males  are  gathered  in  a 
society  by  themselves,  whether  in  the  prison,  or 
the  shop,  or  the  school,  or  the  army — every  be- 
ginning of  the  esprit  du  corps  in  evil  is  kept 
under,  shamed  away,  made  impossible  by  the 
association  of  the  gentler  sex,  who  can  not- co- 
operate in  it,  and  can  not  think  of  it  with  re- 
spect. 

And  what  so  long  ago  was  proved  by  this 
earliest  experiment,  has  since  been  proved  a 
dozen  or  twenty  times  over  by  other  experi- 
ments under  other  forms  of  religion,  as  well  as 
under  all  varieties  of  literary  culture  and  social 
atmosphere.  Thus  if  any  one  should  imagine 
that  the  success  of  this  first  trial  at  Oberlin  was 
due  to  the  particular,  very  strongly  pronounced 
type  of  religions  influence  there  established,  he 
may  hear  President  Mann,  of  the  Unitarian  Col- 
lege at  Antioch,  where  also  the  two  sexes  were 
combined  in  the  same  studies,  uniting  in  the 


16 

testimony — "We  have  the  most  orderly,  sober, 
diligent,  exemplary  institution  in  the  country. 
We  passed  through  the  last  term  and  are  more 
than  half  through  the  present ;  and  I  have  not 
had  occasion  to  make  a  single  entry  of  any  mis- 
demeanor in  our  record  book — not  a  case  for  any 
serious  discipline.  There  is  no  rowdyism  in  the 
village,  no  nocturnal  rampages  making  night 
hideous.  All  is  quiet,  peaceful ;  and  the  women 
of  the  village  feel  the  presence  of  our  students, 
when  met  in  the  streets  in  the  evening,  to  be  a 
protection  rather  than  an  exposure.  It  is  almost 
five  years  since  I  came  here,  and,  as  yet,  I  have 
had  no  practical  joke  or  college  prank,  as  they 
are  called,  played  upon  me — not  in  a  single  in- 
stance." A  very  intelligent  writer  in  the  West- 
minster Iteview,  acquainted  with  this  and  with 
many  other  colleges,  testifies  to  the  decisive  supe- 
riority here  in  moral  behavior,  and  puts  double 
honor  on  the  name  before  so  transcendently  hon- 
ored, by  saying,  in  a  touch  of  pleasantry,  that 
"male  students  were  first  called  gentlemen  at 
Antioch." 

The  experiment  of  joining  the  two  sexes  in  the 
same  studies,  and  composing  in  that  manner  the 
society  of  college  life,  has  now  been  carried  far 
enough,  I  think,  to  show  that  it  is  the  only  plan 
which  is  really  according  to  nature.  Whether  the 
colleges  and  universities  of  the  old  monastic  type 
will  change  in  their  organizations,  so  as  to  claim 


THE   BEFOBM   AGAINST   NATURE.  17 

their  advantages  in  the  better  way  discovered,  re- 
mains to  be  seen.  Perhaps  they  would  not  do  it 
if  they  could,  and  perhaps  they  can  not  do  it  if 
they  would.  It  remains,  in  either  case,  to  be  seen 
whether  they  have  benefits  of  any  kind,  sufficient 
to  compensate  for  their  moral  disadvantages,  and 
so  to  keep  them  still  in  existence. 

The  two  sexes  brought  together  in  this  manner, 
it  is  hardly  necessary  to  say,  will  be  rapidly  discov- 
ering their  true  scale  of  merit.  It  matters  little 
whether  they  are  found  to  be  equal  or  unequal  in 
their  talent  of  scholarship ;  for  it  does  not  follow 
that  the  greatest  facility  of  acquirement  will  be  is- 
sued in  the  greatest  power,  or  will  even  be  felt  as  hav- 
ing now  the  greatest  practical  breadth  and  volume. 
Enough,  that  both  sexes  will  better  understand, 
and  more  respect  each  other,  and  will  learn  to 
take  their  relative  places  more  exactly  and  grace- 
fully. That  they  have  in  fact  a  complementary 
nature  one  to  the  other,  will  be  distinctly  felt,  and 
all  but  visibly  seen ;  and  the  college  itself,  in  its 
double  combination  of  male  and  female  impulse, 
will  be  only  a  more  complete  man  or  humanity, 
than  it  otherwise  could  be.  The  male  talent,  and 
the  female,  will  be  a  great  deal  more  exactly  ap- 
prehended than  they  have  been.  It  will  even  be 
seen  that  sex  is  predicable  of  talent  as  of  organi- 
zation, and  both  sexes  of  mind  will  be  receiving 
qualities  and  contributions  from  each  other  in 
their  cross  relations,  such  as  answer  with  general 


18 

exactness  to  the  husbanding  and  meet  helping  of 
the  marriage  bond  itself. 

Educated  on  this  footing  of  equality,  women 
....  will  very  soon  escape  their  unrighteous  disabilities, 
and  obtain  a  place  in  the  scale  of  estimation  that 
exactly  corresponds  with  their  personal  weight  and 
capacity,  and  more  than  that  they  have  no  right 
to  ask.  Employments  will  be  open  to  them  just 
according  to  what  they  are  best  qualified  to  do,  and 
their  wages,  like  the  wages  also  of  men,  will  be  in 
the  exact  compound  ratio  of  what  they  can  do,  and 
what  they  personally  are.  And  as  what  they  per- 
sonally are  includes  a  great  deal  of  favor  to  their 
woman's  look  and  voice,  they  will  scarcely  miss 
the  full  reward  of  their  industry. 

As  they  have  been  educated  with  men,  they  will 
also  become  educators  with  men,  and  if  they  can 
fill  the  highest,  most  responsible  places  of  manage- 
ment and  presiding  trust,  they  must  and  will  ob- 
tain such  places,  and  the  rewards  that  men  have 
in  the  same.  They  will  have  professorships  allow- 
ed them,  such  as  they  can  more  appropriately  fill 
— not  of  mechanical  philosophy  perhaps,  or  chem- 
istry, or  metallurgy,  or  fortification,  but  of  the 
languages,  of  botany,  of  moral  science,  and,  not 
improperly,  of  the  exact  mathematics. 

Meantime,  the  different  learned  professions  will 
be  opened  a  certain  way,  at  least,  in  offers  of  en- 
gagement, as  the  profession  of  medicine  is  doing 
now.  The  practice  of  medicine  is,  to  a  great  ex- 


THE    REFORM   AGAINST    NATURE.  19 

tent,  proper  to  women  as  to  men,  and  is  often  a 
great  deal  more  proper  to  women.  In  cases  of 
surgery,  the  steady  and  firm  hand  of  a  man  is 
indispensable.  At  the  same  time,  a  great  many 
cases  occur  where,  over  and  above  the  necessary 
proprieties  of  sex,  a  practice  is  wanted  that  com- 
bines both  nursing  and  medicine,  and  for  all  such 
cases  a  female  physician  is  even  required.  That 
we  have  educated  female  physicians  already  in  the 
field,  engaged  in  a  large  and  lucrative  practice  is, 
in  this  view,  a  matter  of  fair  congratulation.  It 
will  do  no  harm,  but  will  properly  gladden  a  great 
many  friends  of  humanity,  if  their  number  is  large- 
ly increased. 

Our  women  are  less  forward  in  claiming  a  place 
in  the  legal  profession,  though,  in  one  or  two  cases 
a  preparation  for  it  is  reported  as  now  begun. 
Perhaps  it  may  some  time  be  discovered  that  the 
proper  work  of  this  profession  is  capable  of  being 
divided,  or  set  in  two  departments,  one  of  which 
is  altogether  suitable  for  women.  First,  there  is  a 
silent,  in-door,  office  work,  that  includes  the  inves- 
tigation of  authorities  and  the  citation  of  prece- 
dents ;  the  framing  of  legal  documents,  such  as 
deeds,  contracts,  pleadings,  and  the  like ;  the 
notary-public  functions;  and,  why  not  often? 
the  clerkships  of  courts  of  record.  In  the  sec- 
ond will  be  classed  the  out-door  hunt  of  crimes, 
frauds,  and  disguised  ownerships ;  the  uncovering 
and  preparing  of  evidences;  the  advocacies  and 


20  WOMEN'S  SUFFRAGE  ; 

public  litigations  of  causes.     This  second  depart- 
ment  is   only  for  men ;  for,  whatever   we   may 
think  of  their  talents,  women  are  quite  out  of 
place  in  this  kind  of  engagement.     ~No  doubt  they 
often   have   the  talent  necessary  to  maintain,  or 
manage  a  cause.     The  wonderful  adroitness  and 
persistency  and  more  than  lawyer-like  resource, 
or  insight  of  law,  displayed  by  Mrs.  Gaines  in  the 
conduct  of  her  suit,  are  sufficient  evidence  of  this. 
But  the  battle  she  maintained  was  to  vindicate 
her  own  right,  not  that  of  another ;  and  perhaps 
she  was  saved,  by  this  fact,  from  some  of  the  very 
disagreeable   personal  effects   that  would   other- 
wise have  followed,  ;  Still,  we  have  good  right  to 
say  that,  if  we  will  have  women  left  us  and  not 
mere  female  men,  there  is  no  woman  who  can 
pitch  herself  into  the  wrangle,  and  debate,  and 
vehement  fight  of  a  bar,  and  do  it  for  a  living, 
i  without  becoming  a  virago  shortly.     Her  eye,  her 
j  look,  her  voice,  her  impetuous  action  will  suggest 
la?  knife-blade  edge  sooner  than  some  would  think. 
The  soft  lines  will  vanish ;    the  music  that  was 
will  be  sharpened  to  clangor,  the  bold  air  will  dis- 
miss the  modesty,  and  the  general  expression  will 
,  be — a  caution  !  have  a  caution  !  "  Saying  nothing 
of  the  change  which  has  cost  us  a  woman,  the  un- 
making she  suffers  in  her  voice  and  manners,  will 
reduce  her  shortly,  without  fail,  to  a  very  un- 
popular, ineffective  advocate.     And  it  would  be 
even  a  greater  mistake  for  her  to  think  of  being  a 


THE   REFORM   AGAINST   NATURE.  21 

more  qualified  judge,  because  of  the  finer  equity 
of  her  womanly  dispositions.  Indeed  it  is  a  con- 
siderable part  of  her  incapacity  that  she  is  not 
wicked  enough  to  sift,  expose,  and  vigorously 
score  the  lying  tricks  of  evidence.  Besides,  wo- 
men lack  authority,  and  never  bear  it  well  when 
they  assume  it.  A  judge  who  has  nerve  to  sup- 
port the  even  poise  of  authority  during  all  the  in- 
tricacies of  a  whole  week's  trial,  must  be  more 
than  a  remarkable  woman  therefore — a  kind  of 
Hadamanthus,  somewhat  manlier  than  a  man. 

But  if  women  are  allowed  to  find  a  sphere  open, 
in  the  office- work  side  of  the  legal  profession,  it 
will  be  a  very  great  advantage  gained  for  them 
as  regards  the  range  of  their  employment,  even 
though  they  should  consent  to  have  no  part  in  the 
litigant  operations  of  courts  and  causes.  It  would 
give  them  also  a  more  prominent  and  distinctly 
admitted  place  in  the  world  of  business. 

Precisely  what  is  allowable,  or  not  allowable, 
to  women,  as  regards  the  clerical  profession,  it 
may  not  be  easy  to  determine  ;  only  it  is  clear  as 
need  be  that  a  much  larger  and  more  forward 
operation  is  permissible,  without  damage  to  the 
Christian  order,  and  with  real  advantage  to  the 
Christian  cause.  We  have 'many  more  Christian 
women  than  Christian  men ;  their  piety  ranges 
higher,  and  they  have  many  of  them  higher  gifts 
of  experience,  and  practically  speaking,  a  more  in- 
structed insight  of  the  Christian  truth  and  life. 


22  WOMEN'S  SUFFRAGE  ; 

They  pray  more  and  commonly  know  better  how 
to  pray.  They  do  more  volunteer  work.  So 
richly  gifted,  have  we  still  no  use  to  make  of  them, 
better  than  to  put  an  extinguisher  on  them  and  keep 
them  in  suppression  ?  If  we  think  we  are  detained 
by  Scripture  usage  and  law,  we  can  at  least  ful- 
fill the  Scripture  usage,  and  make  deaconesses  of 
them.  And  if  we  can  make  three  or  four  of  them 
deaconesses,  we  can,  with  as  little  disorder,  make 
a  much  greater  number  if  we  please,  and  set  them 
forth  on  missions  of  public  service  ;  as  Phebe  the 
deaconess  of  the  church  at  Cenchrea  was  sent,  in 
that  manner,  to  Rome.  And  if  they  used  their 
office  well,  would  they  not  u  purchase  to  themselves 
a  good  degree  and  great  boldness  in  the  faith," 
even  as  the  deacons  might  in  theirs  ?  A  single 
glance  in  this  direction  shows  that  a  large  field  is 
here  open  to  the  ministrations  of  Christian  women, 
a  much  larger  field  than,  as  yet,  they  have  been 
called  to  occupy. 

As  regards  the  ministry  of  the  word,  or  the 
matter  of  public  speaking  in  the  churches,  it  is 
very  evident  that  what  Paul  lays  down  as  restric- 
tion in  the  llth  and  14th  chapters  of  his  First  Epis- 
tle to  the  Corinthians — requiring  in  the  former 
that  no  woman  pray  or  prophesy  with  her  head 
uncovered,  and  in  the  latter  that  she  keep  silence 
altogether — that  all  such  restriction  is  now  gone  by, 
in  the  going  by  of  the  particular  specified  reasons 
in  which  it  was  based  ;  viz.:  the  public  "  shame  " 

\ 


THE   EEFOBM   AGAINST   JSTATUKE.  23 

I 

or  scandal  it  would  be  to  religion,  under  the  then 
accepted  laws  of  womanly  modesty,  and  the  current 
impressions  of  disgrace  incurred  and  decency  viola- 
ted, when  these  laws  are  disregarded.  "  Shame," 
and  again  "  shame,"  is  the  consideration  on  which 
he  turns  his  argument  for  restriction,  first  in  one 
rad  then  in  the  other.  But  we  of  the  present 
age  have  no  longer  any  feeling  that  a  woman 
throws  off  her  modesty  because  she  speaks  un- 
veiled ;  though,  in  Turkey  and  some  other  parts 
of  the  world,  that  feeling  may  still  prevail.  We 
have  still  our  likes  and  dislikes,  in  one  degree  or 
another,  to  the  public  speaking  of  women  in  all 
sorts  of  assemblies ;  but  almost  nobody  imagines 
that  a  woman  who  simply  prays  in  the  Spirit,  or 
takes  what  Jeremy  Taylor  calls  "  the  liberty  of 
prophesying,"  in  public  meetings  for  religion,  is 
therefore  broken  loose  from  the  proper  restraints 
of  delicacy.  It  is  our  general  conviction  that 
scenes  of  battle  and  high  wrestling  are  not  foi 
women,  and  that  when  they  go  in  to  wrangle  thus 
with  men,  they  had  much  better  be  somewhere 
else  ;  but  nobody  has  ever  observed  that  Lucretia 
Mott,  or  any  speaker  of  the  Quaker  sisterhood, 
long  practiced  in  the  prophesying  of  the  Spirit, 
has  been  hardening  in  voice,  or  look,  or  becoming 
in  any  respect  less  womanly.  So  far  the  restric- 
tions of  the  "  shame  "  are  gone  by,  and  the  right 
of  speaking  for  religion,  under  the  inspirations  of 
religion,  belongs  apparently  to  women  as  to  men 


And  if  women  have  gifts  that  qualify  them  spe- 
cially for  such  ministrations,  there  appears  to  be 
no  good  reason  longer  why  they  should  be  kept 
under  the  ban  of  silence. 

But  the  question  of  ministration  is  one  thing, 
and  the  question  of  administration  another.  And 
it  is  to  cut  off  this,  as  I  understand,  that  the 
apostle  has  enjoined  it  on  women  to  ukeep  si- 
lence in  the  churches ;  for  it  is  not  permitted 
them,"  he  says,  "  to  speak,  but  to  be  under  obedi- 
ence, as  also  saith  the  law."  The  "  speaking " 
here  intended,  appears  to  be  not  exactly  prophe- 
sying and  praying  in  the  Spirit,  for  these  he  ap- 
pears to  have  just  now  allowed,  under  the  restric- 
tion of  a  veil ;  but  a  speaking  as  in  council  and  au- 
thority— a  debating  of  administrative  matters, 
where  they  will  put  themselves  in  measure  with 
men,  and  assume  a  power  of  leadership  which  does 
not  belong  to  them — is  plainly  meant  to  be  in- 
cluded. "When,  accordingly,  we  ask  how  far  the 
clerical  profession  is  open,  or  may  be,  to  women, 
there  is  no  objection  to  allowing  that  anything 
which  belongs  to  the  quickening,  and  edifying  of 
assemblies  in  the  Spirit  may  be  left  open  to  them  ; 
only  when  we  come  to  matters  of  church  admin- 
istration and  presiding  rule,  these  do  not  come 
within  their  j  urisdiction.  They  can  not,  in  tru  e 
Christian  order,  be  made  pastors,  or  presbyters,  or 
bishops  ;  no  one' of  the  apostles  ever  heard  of  such 
a  thing.  What  a  catalogue  of  honorable  women 


THE  REFORM  AGAINST  NATURE.        25 

does  the  apostle  recite,  in  the  last  chapter  of  his 
Epistle  to  the  Romans  : — Phebe,  "  succorer  of 
many,"  including  also  the  apostle  himself;  Priscil- 
la,  named  before  her  husband,  as  having  u  periled 
even  her  own  neck,"  with  his,  for  the  apostle's  de- 
liverance, "  to  whom  all  the  churches  of  the  Gen- 
tiles now  give  thanks  ;"  "  Mary,  who  bestowed 
much  labor  "  on  the  apostle  himself;  Junia,  named 
with  respect,  as  having  been  "  in  Christ  before 
him,"  and  as  being  now.  a  character  "  of  note 
among  the  apostles  ;"  "  Persis  who  labored  much 
in  the  Lord ;"  Rufus'  mother  whom  the  great  apos- 
tle loves  to  salute  in  the  title  "his  mother  and 
mine."  What  homage  and  respect  does  he  testify 
tp  these  heroic  women,  and  what  estimate  does  he 
hold  of  their  almost  common  ministry  with  him, 
in  the  word  and  sacrifice  of  Jesus !  He  had  work 
enough  for  them,  such  as  many  of  our  fastidious 
over-orderly  patrons  of  order  are  never  finding  any 
place  to  allow ;  and  yet  the  nearest  he  ever  came 
to  putting  any  one  of  them  in  rule,  was  when  he 
allowed  a  single  one  of  them  as  a  deaconess  in  her 
little  suburban  chapel.  Our  conclusion  is,  on  the 
whole,  that,  as  in  the  medical  and  legal  professions, 
so  in  the  clerical,  there  is  a  large  department  of 
ministry  and  service  that  may  properly  be  open  to 
women,  though  no  official  right  of  administration 
or  presiding  rule  is  permitted.  It  is  even  con- 
ceivable that  a  considerable  number  of  women, 
fitly  trained,  should  carry  on  the  quickening  and 
2 


26  WOMEN'S  SUFFRAGE; 

edifying  work  in  as  many  churches,  under  the 
presiding  oversight  and  rule  of  some  common 
presbyter  or  bishop,  doing  every  one  of  them,  it 
m.iy  be,  a  greater  and  more  valued  work  than  he. 
How  far  we  may  rightfully  and  hopefully  go  in 
setting  open  to  women  a  wider  range  of  employ- 
ments, and  by  that  means  increasing  the  rate  of 
wages  for  their  labor,  will  here  be  seen.  I  might 
dwell,  in  the  same  manner,  on  the  advantage  they 
will  gain  and  have  already  gained,  by  assuming 
their  place  in  the  field  of  art  and  literary  produc- 
tion. What  better,  higher  names  can  we  ask  in 
this  field  than  Mrs.  Stowe,  Margaret  Fuller,  Gail 
Hamilton,  and  the  long  and  brilliant  train  that 
follow  in  the  inspiration  of  their  example,  and  tlje 
courage  raised  by  their  success.  All  such  victo- 
ries gotten  by  the  sex  are  gotten  for  the  whole  sex, 
and  even  for  the  humblest  and  most  undistinguish- 
ed members.  They  are  raised  universally  in  per- 
sonal consideration,  and  more  employments  at 
higher  wages  are  open  to  them.  And  then,  the 
more  things  they  do  and  do  well,  the  more  they  will 
be  called  to  do.  They  will  take  the  field  of  common 
school  education  largely  to  themselves,  and  their 
compensations  will  be  graduated  by  their  service. 
They  will  get  hold  of  the  ideas  and  laws  of  busi- 
ness, and  their  business  faculty  will  be  more  respect- 
ed. And  so  they  will  take  a  more  forward  part 
in  the  trades ;  sometimes  on  their  own  account,  and 
sometimes  in  the  subordinate  ranges  of  clerkship, 


THE  REFORM   AGAINST   NATURE.  27 

book-keeping,  and  the  like.  They  will  thus  begin? 
ere  long,  to  conquer  places  and  ranges  of  business 
from  which  formerly  they  were  excluded,  becom- 
ing, not  improperly,  managers  of  hotels,  bank-tel- 
lers, brokers,  actuaries  of  insurances,  private  bank- 
ers, type-setters,  overseers  of  printing.  Breaking 
into  such  new  fields,  they  will  cease  to  crowd 
each  other  as  now,  by  an  over-supply  in  the  mar- 
ket of  operative  industry ;  till  finally  the  poor 
sewing  women  will  obtain  some  easement  of  their 
truly  hard  lot — the  grace  of  mitigation  will  be 
reaching  down  even  to  them.  They  will  no  more 
work  and  die  as  now,  but  they  will  begin  to  work 
and  live.  I  do  not  say  or  think  that  women  will 
ever  obtain,  in  the  general,  as  high  wages  as  men, 
partly  because  the  number  of  their  employments 
must  be  much  smaller,  and  partly  because  they 
can  not  always  do  an  equal,  or  equally  perfect 
style  of  work. 

The  great  departments  of  agriculture,  engineer- 
ing, and  war,  seafaring,  railroad  making,  architec- 
ture, machine  building,  all  the  heaviest,  roughest, 
tensest  forms  of  creative  labor  are  reserved  for 
men.  Almost  any  woman  would  even  think  it  an 
affront  to  be  offered  a  part  in  them.  Indeed,  she 
has  neither  muscle,  nor  eye,  nor  hand,  for  these 
engagements.  How  often  do  we  hear  it  asserted  as 
a  fact  unquestionable  and  well  understood,  that 
no  sewing  woman  was  ever  yet  able  to  make  a  per- 
fect, gentleman's,  coat.  Sewing  all  her  life  long, 


28  WOMEN'S  SUFFRAGE; 

she  has  never  obtained  the  precision  of  eye,  and 
firm  guidance  of  hand  necessary  to  this  very  nicely 
combined,  delicately  complex,  really  constructive 
whole  of  stitch-work.  And  it  is  only  just  that 
men  should  have  this  advantage ;  for  if  they  could 
not  excel  in  the  mechanical  perfectness  and  pre- 
cision of  all  such  mechanical  labor,  they  would  sink 
to  a  dishonored  grade,  as  being  only  the  world's  male 
drudges,  in  bearing,  as  they  must,  all  the  rough- 
est offices,  and  hardest,  coarsest  forms  of  service. 
And  if  women  are  disposed  to  complain  that  they 
can  not  do  as  perfect  work  as  men,  let  them  take 
their  compensation  in  the  fact  that  they  are  ex- 
cused everywhere,  except  among  savages,  from  the 
hardest,  and  most  nearly  animal  drudgeries  of  la- 
bor. And  if  their  works  require  no  such  tension 
of  faculty  as  ma}7  set  the  exactness  of  their  hand, 
and  the  firm  precision  of  their  motions,  it  must 
be  sufficient  for  them  that  a  fine  flexibility  and 
grace  of  action  are  left  them,  to  be  their  special 
ornament. 

It  will  be  understood,  of  course,  in  our  contriv- 
ances of  ways  to  enlarge  the  spheres  and  advance 
the  opportunities  of  women,  that  they  are  to  be 
carefully  defended  by  the  laws,  in  their  rights  of 
character,  and  family,  and  property.  If  there  is 
no  way  to  adjust  the  scheme  of  legal  process  and 
record  in  our  courts,  but  to  regard  the  married  wo- 
man as  femme  covert,  existing  in  and  under  the 
name  of  her  husband,  and  having  no  right  of  suit 


THE   KEFOKM  AGAINST  NATURE.  29 

in  her  own  name ;  there  must  yet  be  due  provi- 
sion made  for  the  complete  assertion  of  her  per- 
sonality, and  the  due  protection  of  her  property 
from  every  sort  of  encroachment,  whether  by  her 
husband,  or  by  wrong-doers  acting  in  conspiracy 
with  him.  The  law  must  be  law  for  women,  as 
truly  as  for  men.  Every  thing  must  be  so  adjusted, 
if  possible,  as  to  remove  the  liabilities  of  wrong, 
and  fortify  the  securities  of  right,  and  multiply  the 
chances  of  industry  for  women.  If  we  undertake 
to  legislate  for  them,  we  must  do  better  for  them 
in  favor,  than  they  can  propose,  or  dictate,  or  vote 
for  themselves,  and  bow  them  gallantly  forward 
into  all  best  conditions  and  positions  appropriate 
to  their  sex. 

What  then — for  this  is  getting  now  to  be  the 
principal  and  most  forward  question — what  are  we 
to  say  or  decide  in  respect  to  the  question  of  suf- 
frage for  women  ?  Does  it  follow  that  in  doing  all 
which  is  best,  and  for  the  highest  possible  advan- 
tage of  women,  we  are  called  to  give  them  an 
equal  place  with  men  in  the  ballot,  and  the  right 
of  public  office?  To  this  question  we  are  now 
brought,  and  what  I  have  been  saying  in  this 
present  chapter,  has  been  specially  designed  to 
prepare  it  in  such  manner  as  to  place  it  in  the  best 
condition  for  a  just  settlement. 

Many  persons  who  mistook  their  ground,  in  op- 
posing the  abolition  of  slavery,  are  naturally  shy, 
under  this  new  question,  of  being  caught  again, 


30  WOMEN'S  SUFFRAGE  ; 

and  are  half  ready  to  leap  into  the  gulf  of  what 
is  called  the  emancipation  of  women,  before  they 
can  distinctly  see  the  bottom  of  it.  Others  again, 
who  have  all  their  lives  long  meant  to  keep  the 
van  of  human  progress  and  never  fall  behind,  are 
now  being  pushed  on  blindly  by  their  mere  habit, 
as  if  there  were  some  real  inconsistency  in  turning 
conservative  now.  They  have  a  certain  dislike 
or  distaste  for  any  such  holding  back  of  motion, 
and  it  troubles  them  that,  for  some  reason,  they  do 
not  feel  as  ready  to  go  forward  as  they  would  ex- 
pect. The  very  great  distinction  between  reforms 
that  go  with  nature,  and  reforms  that  go  against 
nature,  they  do  not  apprehend  distinctly  enough 
to  have  the  benefit  of  it.  And  just  here  lies  the 
question,  we  are  now  to  see,  of  this  very  great,  fear- 
fully momentous  question  of  women's  suffrage. 

It  is  amazing  that  so  many  of  our  writers  and 
debaters  are  able  to  handle  this  question  so 
lightly.  For  one,  I  am  never  able  to  look  down 
this  gulf  without  a  shudder  of  recoil.  I  read  two 
days  ago  in  the  "  Nation"  newspaper  an  article 
headed,  "  Is  there  suck  a  thing  as  sex  f" — the  most 
brilliant  and  really  most  complete  utterance  I  have 
anywhere  met,  and  to  which  I  may  perhaps  recur 
hereafter — but  there  was  a  single  point  in  the 
conception  of  it  which  I  could  not  see,  and  felt  to 
be  even  dangerously  false.  The  writer  wanted  us 
to  look  on  this  matter  tentatively;  saying,  in  effect, 
"  go  on,  make  approaches,  carry  out  the  reform 


THE   REFORM    AGAINST   NATURE.  31 

by  stages,  and  make  it  sure,  that  you  are  not  too  far 
on  your  way,  whenever  you  may  wish  to  retrace 
your  steps."  But  the  terrible  thing  about  this  re- 
vocare  graduvn  is  that  there  is  no  such  possibility. 
Women  having  once  gotten  the  polls  will  have 
them  to  the  end,  and  if  we  precipitate  our  Ameri- 
can society  down  this  abyss,  and  make  a  final 
wreck  of  our  public  virtue  in  it,  that  is  the  end  of 
our  new-born,  more  beneficent  civilization.  The 
race  must  now  look  for  some  other  and  second  new 
world — where  shall  it  be  found — that  can  set  on 
foot  still  another  and  better  experiment.  Our  sun 
is  set ;  is  there  any  other  sun  to  rise  2 


32 


n. 


NO  RIGHT  OF  SUFFRAGE  ABSOLUTE  IN  MAN  OR 
WOMAN. 

IN  a  campaign  raised  for  women's  suffrage,  it 
was  to  be  expected  that  the  argument  would  take 
its  beginning  at  our  American  doctrine  of  rights  ; 
or,  as  is  sometimes  put,  of  equal  rights,  natural 
rights,  rights  of  natural  equality.  Probably  the 
proposed  reform  itself  is  due  to  an  over-absolute, 
uncritical  reception  of  that  doctrine ;  being  only 
a  fair  extension,  or  logically  right  version  of  it. 
However  this  may  be,  the  advocates  of  women's 
suffrage  are  quite  innocent,  doubtless,  of  an} 
suspicion  that  these  and  other  like  phrases,  cur- 
rent in  our  green  age  of  statesmanship,  are  more 
pretentious  than  solid,  and  take  us  more  by  their 
sound  than  by  any  properly  discovered  meaning. 
And  they  have  as  good  right  to  hold  them  in  faith, 
and  draw  them  into  their  particular  applications, 
as  many  others  have  to  hold  them  in  the  same 
faith,  and  yet  eschew  the  applications. 

If  we  desire  to  know  exactly  what  merit  or 
meaning  there  may  be  in  these  famous  declara- 


THE  REFORM  AGAINST  NATURE.  33 

tions  of  rights,  equalities,  compacts,  con  sen  tings 
of  the  governed  through  majorities,  and  the  like, 
we  must  take  the  lesson  where  the  lesson  was  first 
taken.  After  long  ages  of  priestcraft  and  prince- 
craft  in  royal  and  noble  families,  ages  of  wrong 
and  crushing  absolutism,  under  pretext  even  of 
divine  right,  certain  forward  minds  began  to  be 
stirred  with  a  natural  detestation.  They  were 
such  men  as  Rousseau  and  Yoltaire  and  others, 
sometimes  called  malignants ;  otherwise,  philoso- 
phers, free-thinkers,  agitators  for  liberty.  They 
hated  government — royalty  that  is,  and  aristoc- 
racy— as  a  shocking  insult  and  fraud,  and  hated 
religion  as  the  stupendous  lie  that  seasoned  and 
sanctified  the  fraud  ;  assuming  that  what  they  saw 
of  government  was  government,  and  what  they 
saw  of  religion  was  religion.  Full  of  this  immense 
disgust,  they  betook  themselves  mentally  to  the 
woods,  and  began  to  envy  the  people  of  the  woods. 
Savage  life — this  they  called  the  paradise,  and 
they  even  seemed  to  picture  it  with  a  true  long- 
ing. Here  are  no  distinctions  but  the  simple 
equality  of  nature,  the  virtues  are  unsophisticated, 
the  religion  is  nature,  government,  if  they  have  it, 
is  a  matter  of  simple  consent  and  compact. 

The  picture  had  such  fascination  to  them  and 
to  thousands  far  away,  in  sympathy  with  them, 
that  a  kind  of  general  effort  began,  to  conceive  a 
doctrine  of  the  state,  that  was  in  fact  a  doctrine 
of  the  woods.  The  new  philosophy,  or  new  lib- 

2* 


34 

erty  began  thus  at  the  condition  of  nature  ;  under 
taking  to  show  how  men,  qualified  and  set  on  by 
the  promptings  of  nature,  could  originate  a  state 
of  civil  order  and  obligatory  law.  The  problem 
was  to  create  obligation  from  below  that  is  not 
from  above ;  such  as  will  stand  firm  and  sure, 
apart  from  any  terms  of  divine  order  or  sanctions 
of  divine  magistracy.  The  government  that  was 
to  be,  must  be  contributed  by  the  consent  of  the 
governed,  and  as  the  governed  are  all  mere  natural 
men,  standing  on  that  footing  of  equality — as  they 
do  in  the  woods — their  consent  is  in  their  vote, 
and  their  vote  is  grounded  in  their  equal  right  to 
vote.  And  so,  out  of  mere  nature,  and  built  up 
from  below,  there  is  to  be  raised  a  complete  civil 
order,  binding  on  each  citizen — no  thanks  to  God — 
because  the  general  citizenship  so  orders  and  de- 
crees. Sometimes  the  scheme  is  further  elaborated 
by  showing  that  all  right  government  so  made,  is 
in  fact  a  "  social  compact ;  "  where  the  multitude 
come  in  to  surrender  enough  of  their  individual 
right  and  liberty,  to  make  up  a  pool  of  endowment 
for  the  state.  A  whole  system  of  phraseologies 
came  into  use  in  this  manner  that  belonged  to  the 
general  type  of  the  free-thinking  philosophy,  and 
fell  into  such  currency  in  speech,  that  multitudes 
received  the  mixture  without  knowing  at  all 
whence  it  came.  Even  the  really  great  mind 
of  Locke  took  in  somewhat  of  the  infection, 
without  being  duly  aware  of  the  sophistry  and 


THE  REFORM  AGAINST  NATURE.        35 

dangerous  falsity  covered  up  under  these  preten- 
tious guises. 

In  this  way  it  came  to  pass  that  our  fathers  of 
the  American  revolution,  long  ago  taken  by  these 
catch-words  of  liberty,  fell  into  their  use,  more 
easily  than  was  to  be  desired,  in  their  manifestoes 
and  public  declarations.  And  the  phraseologies 
thus  adopted  were  what  Mr.  Choate  very  properly, 
though  to  the  mortal  offense  of  many,  called  "  the 
glittering  generalities."  They  are  just  what  led 
Mr.  Calhoun  into  his  miserably  delusive  state- 
rights  sophism,  where  he  infers  that  if  government 
is  founded  in  consent,  then  it  is  an  agency  or  trust 
contributed  by  the  parties,  and  therefore  termina- 
ble by  them.  Bitterly  have  we  paid  for  this  very 
cheap  imposture  of  philosophy,  in  our  late  dread- 
ful war  of  rebellion,  and  nDw  it  is  to  be  seen, 
whether  it  may  plunge  us  again  down  this  other, 
deeper  gulf  of  women's  suffrage. 

The  short  argument,  as  it  is  commonly  put, 
runs  thus :  women  are  the  equals  ^ of  i|mejtr  and 
have  thejce£are-an  equal  right  to  vote.  In  which 
very  brief  and  very  simple  form  of  deduction, 
there  are,  if  we  are  not  willing  to  be  taken  by  the 
shallowest  possible  fallacies,  two  quite  plainly  un- 
true conclusions.  First,  it  is  not  certainly  true 
that  women  are  equal  to  men.  They  are  equally 
women  as  men  are  men  ;  they  are  equally  human 
as  men  ;  they  are  so  far  equally  entitled  to  protec- 


f 


36  WOMEN'S  SUFFKAGE  ; 

tion  as  men,  but  it  does  not  hence  appear  that 
they  are  equal  to  men.  They  may  be  superior  to 
men  ;  they  may  be  inferior  to  men  ;  but  what  is  a 
great  deal  closer  probably  to  the  truth,  they  may 
be  very  unlike  in  kind  to  men  ;  so  unlike  that  in 
the  civil  state  they  had  best,  both  for  their  own 
sake  and  for  the  public  good,  stand  back  from  any 
claim  of  right,  in  the  public  administration  of 
the  laws.  How  far  this  unlikenese  extends  is  not 
here  the  question.  I  shall  undertake,  at  a  future 
stage  of  the  discussion,  to  state  more  precisely  in 
what  the  relative  unlikeness  consists  ;  for  the  pres- 
ent I  cannot  forbear  citing  from  the  Nation,  a 
very  short  but  excellently  vigorous  statement  of 
the  fact  itself.  "  The  unlikeness  between  men 
and  women  is  radical  and  essential.  It  runs 
through  all  the  spheres.  Distinct  as  they  are  in 
bodily  form  and  features,  they  are  quite  as  dis- 
tinct in  mental  and  moral  characteristics.  They 
neither  think,  feel,  wish,  purpose,  will,  nor  act 
alike.  They  take  the  same  views  of  nothing.  The 
old  statements  that  one  is  passive,  the  other  active  ; 
one  emotional,  the  other  moral ;  one  affectionate, 
the  other  rational;  one  sentimental^, the  other 
intellectual,  are  likely  to  be  more  than  verified 
by  science.  Of  course,  these  statements,  whether 
verified  or  not,  do  not  justify  the  imposition  of 
arbitrary  limits  on  opportunity  or  enterprise.  It 
still  remains  to  determine  what  place  each  can  fill, 
what  work  each  can  do,  what  standard  each  can 


THE   REFORM   AGAINST   NATURE.  37 

reach  ;  and  these  nature  should  be  left  to  deter- 
mine. But  that  both  can  not  occupy  the  same 
place,  do  the  same  work,  or  reach  the  same  stand- 
ard, ought,  we  think,  to  be  assumed.  Nature  has 
decreed  it  so."^  Accordingly,  if  the  two  sexes  are 
so  very  unlike  in  kind,  there  can,  so  far,  be  no  pred- 
ication of  equality  between  them.  And  then,  just 
so  far,  the  argument  for  a  right  in  women  to  vote, 
in  consideration^ -their  equality^  i§4aeoaelusive. 
"We  do  not  say  that  a  yard  is  equal  to  a  pound, 
because  the  two  measures  have  no  common  quality ; 
though  it  may  be  that  a  yard  of  some  one  thing 
is  equal  in  value  to  a  pound  of  some  other.  "We 
do  not  say,  taking  an  example  where  there  is  more 
appearance  of  a  common  quality,  that  silk  and 
flax  are  equal ;  and  yet  they  may  make  an  equally 
strong,  or  equally  fine  thread ;  but  since  one  will 
make  a  finer  lace,  and  the  other  a  more  splendid 
robe,  one  a  superb  damask,  and  the  other  a  superb 
velvet,  we  do  not  think  of  saying  at  all,  that  they 
are  equal,  because  they  are  so  far  different  in  kind. 
In  which  also  we  may  see,  that,  while  women  and 
men  have  a  great  many  common  properties,  they 
have  also  a  great  many  which  are  not  common — 
so  many,  that  we  never  can  be  sure  what  we 
mean  by  it,  when  we  say  that  they  are  equal. 

Yes,  but  their  rights  are  equal,  some  will  hasten, 
it  may  be,  to  answer,  and  that  is  enough  to  sup- 
port the  argument.  Doubtless  they  have  a  per- 
fect and  complete  right  to  be  women,  as  men  have 


38  WOMEN'S  SUFFRAGE; 

to  be  men,  but  it  may  be,  still,  that  the  having  a 
perfect  right  to  be  either  women  or  men,  does  not 
include  any  right  of  voting  at  all — that  is  the  very 
question  here  in  issue. 

The  second  fallacy  above  referred  to  is  built  on 
an  argyrmfiTit  equally  haggjftRR*  .it  is  that,  being 
equal  to  men,  women  liaj^_aodglit-to-vote  because 
men  have  a  right  to, vote.  Here  the  meaning  is, 
if  there  is  any,  that  men  have  a  natural  right  to 
vote,  or  a  right  to  vote  that  is  grounded  in  na- 
ture. The  words  man  and  suffrage  have,  in  this 
view,  a  fixed  relation ;  a  universal  and  permanent 
relation ;  such  that  suffrage  never  was  or  can  be 
denied  them,  save  by  a  public  wrong ;  for  every 
right  is  a  something  never  to  be  stripped  away, 
except  by  a  wrong.  Since,  then,  prior  to  the  ar- 
rival of  our  own  American  Republic,  there  had 
never  been  more  than  two  or  three  small  peoples 
in  the  world  that  acknowledged  any  right  to  vote 
at  all,  and  these  no  equal  right,  but  only  rights  so 
unequal  that  a  very  few  men  of  grade,  as  in  Rome, 
counted  more  than  a  whole  bottom  ti^r  of  rabble 
that  composed  the  chief  population  of  the  city, 
we  are  seen  to  have  begun  our  public  his- 
tory, by  assuming  that  there  never  before  had 
been  a  legitimate  government  in  the  world !  If 
we  could  say  that,  and  not  be  shocked  by  the  non- 
sense of  our  assumption,  we  were  certainly  a  very 
remarkable  people.  How  much  better  and  closer 
to  the  sound  realities  of  history,  to  have  con- 


THE    REFORM    AGAINST    NATURE.  39 

fessed,  that  all  the  great  monarchies,  and  the 
rising  and  falling,  and  dawning  and  vanishing, 
and  even  the  merely  de  facto  states,  had  a  cer- 
tain morally  incipient  and  legitimate  authority, 
even  though  they  gave  no  right  of  voting  at  all, 
and  never  heard  or  even  thought  of  such  a  thing. 
Besides,  we  had  not  then,  and  never  since  have 
had,  ourselves,  any  equal  right  of  voting  as  being 
men,  saying  nothing  of  women,  under  our  own 
constitutions  and  liberties.  Some  of  us  have  been 
voting  on  the  score  of  our  property ;  some  on  the 
right  we  have  bought  by  military  service ;  some 
on  the  ground  of  qualifications  imparted  by  our 
education ;  some  on  the  count  of  our  slaves. 
Doubtless  we  that  are  males  are  all  so  far  equal, 
but  we  never  to  this  day  have  been  allowed  to 
vote  on  our  naked  equality,  except  in  here  and 
there  a  single  State.  How  then  does  it  fare  with 
the  argument  that  women  have  a  right,  on  the 
score  of  their  equality  with  men,  when  men  them- 
selves can  not  vote  on  the  score  of  their  own 
equality  with  -one  another  ?  Besides,  if  any  of  us 
think  to  make  out  a  natural  right  of  voting, 
whether  in  men  or  women,  a  sufficient  hunt  of  our 
psychologic  nature  ought  to  find  some  place  in  it 
where  the  right,  for  so  many  ages  undiscovered, 
inheres.  It  was  observed,  long  ages  ago,  by  such 
men  as  Plato,  Aristotle,  Cicero,  and  others,  that 
our  very  nature  is  configured,  all  through,  to  the 
civil  state,  and  the  condition  of  civil  obligation ; 


40 

but  no  man  has  ever  yet  discovered  that  there  is  a 
right  to  vote  twisted  in  among  our  functions  and 
rational  categories.  When  that  discovery  is  made, 
it  will  be  as  soon  as  any  such  natural  right  can  be 
set  in  account,  and  made  a  basis  of  argument  for 
the  voting  of  women. 

Whence  then  do  we  get  what  now  we  call  the 
right  to  vote  ?  If  it  is  not  grounded  in  oar  nature, 
whence  comes  it?  Some  will  imagine  that  the  pay- 
ment of  taxes  involves  a  right  of  representation, 
and  this  a  right  of  voting ;  so  that  we  have  a 
good  title  to  the  suffrage  made  up  indirectly. 
But  the  right  of  representation — who  has  ever 
imagined,  till  quite  recently,  that  such  a  right 
must  accrue  on  the  payment  of  taxes,  and  that  no 
government  is  legitimate  which  does  not  allow  that 
right  ?  How  little  government  has  there  been  in 
the  world  that  had  even  a  thought  of  representa- 
tion as  connected  with  taxation  ? — has  there  been 
no  government,  therefore,  but  only  wrong  ?  It  may 
be  desirable,  I  grant,  since  the  people  are  taxed, 
that  they  should  have  some  check  upon  the  taxing 
power,  and  some  voice  in  the  public  appropriation 
of  money.  But  that  is  a  matter  which  belongs  to 
a  consideration  of  measures  and  regulations,  and 
not  in  any  sense  to  first  principles.  Our  fathers  in 
the  revolution  had  a  great  deal  to  say  of  being 
taxed  by  the  Parliament  without  being  represented 
in  it,  and  seemed  almost  to  hang  the  vindication 
of  their  revolt  on  this  one  point  of  grievance.  But 


THE   REFORM   AGAETST  NATURE.  41 

there  was  a  peculiarity  in  their  protest  which  nei- 
ther they  nor  we  have  always  observed,  as  dis- 
tinctly as  the  due  understanding  of  it  requires.  It 
was  really  a  protest  against  having  this  great,  new 
world  farmed  and  used,  for  the  benefit  of  a  little, 
far-off  patch  of  island  in  the  German  Ocean,  which, 
compared  with  the  gigantic  world-empire  here  in 
debate,  had  no  consequence  and  could  have  no  con- 
tinental future  at  all.  On  this  canvass  of  out- 
spreading futurity  it  was,  that  so  many  vehement 
protestations,  indignations,  and  threats,  cast  their 
shadows.  The  real  meaning  was  that  such  and  so 
great  a  people  are  not  to  be  kept  for  the  fleece ! 
And  yet  these  same  colonial  fathers  and  patriots 
were  every  year  taxing  thousands,  both  of  men 
and  women,  without  any  thought  of  a  wrong,  in 
not  giving  them  a  chance  of  representation.  And 
if,  afterward,  they  discovered  that  their  argument 
could  rightly  be  extended,  so  as  to  include  the  re- 
lations of  individual  persons  to  the  state,  they  did 
not  even  then  discover,  and  it  is  not  to  this  day 
discovered,  that  women  paying  taxes  have,  by 
consequence,  a  right  of  representation.  All  that 
we  can  now  say  is  that  it  stands  before  us  as  a 
question  to  be  debated,  whether  it  will  be  for  their 
benefit  and  for  the  public  good,  that  women  be 
partakers  also  in  the  right  of  suffrage  and  of  rep- 
resentation ?  It  is  not  a  question  of  absolute  right 
or  first  principle,  as  when  the  right  of  conscience 
is  asserted;  for  then  there  is  no  point  to  be 


42 

debated ;  but  it  is  a  question  of  benefit  concerned 
or  not  concerned,  in  a  certain  political  measure — 
that,  and  nothing  more.  In  the  admission  of  men 
to  a  right  of  suffrage,  it  has  never  been  voted  for 
any  one  absolute  reason.  Sometimes  it  has  been  be- 
cause they  are  taxed,  sometimes  because  they  are 
liable  to  be,  sometimes  because  they  perform  mili- 
tary duty,  sometimes  because  it  discourages  or 
takes  away  hope  from  their  virtue  not  to  allow  it, 
sometimes  because  the  refusal  awakens  animosities 
in  them  against  the  state.  So  if  women  ever  have 
the  right  of  voting  accorded  to  them,  it  must  be 
for  a  like  variety  of  reasons,  and  not  on  the  ground 
of  any  absolute  principle. 

What  then  becomes,  some  will  ask,  of  the  great 
law  of  consent,  that  in  which  we  affirm  "  that 
governments  instituted  among  men  derive  their  just 
powers  from  the  consent  of  the  governed."  That 
may  be  true,  or  partly  true,  I  answer  in  some  pos- 
sible sense  of  the  terms,  but  never  as  an  absolute 
proposition.  It  may  be  true  enough  sometimes  to 
be  asserted  antagonistically  with  great  advantage  ; 
as  where  there  is  really  wanted  some  limit,  or  coun- 
tercheck for  the  due  restraining  of  power.  But  if 
it  be  meant  that  no  government  is  legitimate,  save 
as  it  has  the  actual  consent  of  its  people,  then  there 
have  been  very  few  legitimate  governments.  Nay, 
there  never  has  been  one,  and  is  not  now.  No  fifth 
part  of  our  own  people,  in  fact,  ever  consented  to  the 
government,  whether  formally  or  by  implication. 


THE   REFORM   AGAINST    NATURE.  43 

~No  new  statute  passed,  ever  had  the  consent  of 
more  then  a  very  small  fraction  of  the  people. 
Minors,  women,  invalids,  absentees,  voters  of  the 
opposing  party — take  away  all  these,  and  how 
much  of  consent  is  left  ?  If  the  major  vote  of  such 
as  have  the  ballot  supposes  general  consent,  then 
it  must  be  by  a  legal  fiction  so  great,  that  it 
would  scarcely  be  greater  without  any  vote  at  all. 

If  it  be  meant  that  all  just  powers  of  govern- 
ment are  derived  from  the  consent  of  the  governed, 
in  the  sense,  that  so  many  "just  powers"  are,  in 
fact,  gotten  by  the  surrender  and  contribution  of 
rights  belonging  to  individuals — an  argument  very 
often  stated  and  by  many  soberly  believed — then 
it  is  in  point  to  answer  that  no  civil  right,  or 
power,  ever  belonged,  or,  by  any  possible  suppo- 
sition, could  belong,  to  any  individual,  or  multi- 
tude of  individuals.  Has  any  individual  ,a  right 
to  make  arrests,  a  right  to  enforce  contracts,  a 
right  to  put  contending  parties  on  trial  for  the 
settlement  of  their  disputes,  a  right  of  imprison- 
ment, or  penal  enforcement,  or  making  war  or 
peace ;  a  right,  in  one  word,  to  exercise  the  least 
authority,  or  law-giving  power  over  society  ?  In 
this  particular  sense  of  the  terms,  we  are  rather 
to  say  that  no  one  just  power  of  government 
was  ever  derived,  or  ever  could  be,  from  the  con- 
sent of  the  governed. 

There  is  nothing,  therefore,  to  be  gained  for 
women's  suffrage,  under  this  principle,  as  the 


4:4:  WOMEN'S  SUFFRAGE; 

champion  debaters  of  the  sex  are  often  heard  to 
assume.  ^Vomen  must  get  their  right  to  vote,  if 
at  all,  just  where  men  have  gotten  it ;  out  of  his- 
tory ,^)ut  of  providential  preparations  and  causes, 
out  of  the  concessions  of  custom,  out  of  expe- 
diences concluded,  and  debated  reasons  of  public 
benefit.  (We  have  no  better  right  than  this,  as 
men,  and  there  is  no  better  right  to  be,  for  women. 
The  question  is  concluded  for  them,  by  no  a  priori 
matter,  but  it  is  their  right  and  privilege  to  show, 
that  a  power  to  hold  office  and  vote  will  be  for  the 
real  benefit  of  their  sex,  and  for  the  solid  and 
permanent  good  of  society.  Indeed,  if  they  can 
only  make  it  appear  that  they  themselves  will  be 
put  in  a  more  favorable  condition  of  life  and  char- 
acter, by  thus  opening  the  political  arena  to  them, 
we  shall  even  deem  the  controversy,  if  there  be  a 
controversy,  to  be  effectually  ended.  If  we  some- 
times oppress  them  -by  our  heedlessness,  it  is  our 
custom  rather,  in  matters  of  deliberate  purpose, 
to  give  them  more  than  will  be  either  for  their 
benefit  or  our  own. 

Having  argued  in  this  manner  the  question  of 
right,  showing  that  suffrage  is  a  right  given,  never 
a  right  to  be  demanded  because  it  inheres  before- 
hand in  the  person,  and  that  neither  men  nor 
women  have  any  title  to  it,  save  what  is  grounded 
in  considerations  of  benefit,  I  am  tempted  to  add 
another  clause  and  topic  in  the  argument,  just  for 


THE  REFORM  AGAINST  NATURE.        45 

the  purpose  of  taking  down  a  little  our  egregious 
opinion  of  the  suffrage.  The  transcendent  merit 
we  assume  for  our  institute  of  free  suffrage  is  not 
quite  as  evident  as  we  think  it  is ;  far  less  evident 
than  our  women  think  it  is,  when  they  look  to 
find  a  new-creation  stage  of  advancement  in  it. 
In  a  certain  large  view,  it  has  done  bravely  for  us, 
and  we  have  much  to  boast  in  it ;  which  we  do 
not  forget  to  boast,  in  terms,  that  far  exceed  all 
rational  proportions  of  merit,  and  even  display 
some  tokens  of  national  conceit.  After  all,  our 
free  suffrage  state,  when  taken  close  at  hand,  as 
when  we  go  to  the  ballot,  makes  a  rather  coarse, 
half  nasty  element ;  where  men  are  pitched  into 
count,  without  any  consideration  of  merit  or 
weight,  and  where  they  vote  promotions,  with  only 
the  feeblest,  mere  chance  reference  to  the  merit 
of  the  promotions  voted.  The  machinery  is  dread- 
fully loose,  and  the  look  of  order  and  right  is  only 
what  a  pell-mell  operation  yields.  "We  are  coaxed 
and  flattered,  for  the  time,  by  the  feeling  that  we 
are  doing  something  great,  and  getting  a  more  ad- 
vanced consequence  in  it.  But,  for  one,  I  seriously 
doubt  whether  any  so  great  benefits,  either  personal 
or  public,  are  coming  out  of  the  suffrage,  as  we  are 
wont  to  assume.  It  certainly  can  make  the  cor- 
ruptest,  most  intolerable  government  in  the  world ; 
as  it  is  rapidly  finding  how  to  do  already  in  the 
city  of  JSTew  York,  and  it  is  plainly  to  be  seen  that 
possible  evils  are  covered  up  in  it,  that  may  finally 


46  WOMEN'S  SUFFRAGE; 

take  us  down  backward,  faster  than  its  former  bene- 
fit has  sent  us  onward.  That  it  has  a  law  of  limita- 
tion in  its  own  nature,  and  will  come  to  its  end  and 
disappear  within  a  comparatively  short  run  of  time, 
is  far  more  probable  than  some  of  us  suppose. 

I  speak  in  this  manner,  having  distinctly  in  mind 
a  certain  way  of  promotion  established  in  one  of  the 
great  nations  of  the  world,  that  has  a  far  superior 
dignity  and  much  better  promise  both  of  perma- 
nence and  character.  Instead  of  electing  by  suf- 
frage, it  elects  by  contest ;  that  is,  by  trials  of  merit 
and  personal  qualification.  It  works  by  the  West 
Point  method,  and  hangs  promotion  at  the  end,  on 
the  scale  of  merit  discovered.  The  whole  grand 
nation,  comprising  four  hundred  millions  of  peo- 
ple, is  a  West  Point  cadetship  extended.  The 
humblest  as  well  as  the  highest  of  the  youth,  are 
put  in  schooling,  and  then  are  sifted  three  times 
over,  by  three  great  examinations  that  go  up 
by  an  ascending  series.  And  then,  out  of  the 
very  limited  number  of  the  cadets  that  are  crown- 
ed at  the  last,  are  to  come  all  the  high  officers  of 
the  kingdom — officers  to  be  who  will  be  known  as 
long  as  they  live,  to  have  excelled,  first,  in  scholar- 
ship ;  secondly,  in  talent  and  capacity  of  writing ; 
and  thirdly,  in  the  well-attested  record  of  an  up- 
right, pure  behavior.  Oar  contempt  for  this  Chi- 
nese people  had  better  be  expended  fast,  for  we 
shall  not  have  our  opportunity  long.  A  nation 
that  existed  a  thousand  years  before  the  Trojan 


THE  EEFOEM  AGAINST  NATUEE.        47 

war,  came  to  its  full  type  in  the  days  of  Pericles, 
and  still  holds  on  as  by  some  gift  of  civil  immor- 
tality, well  and  most  systematically  governed  still, 
with  less  of  fraud,  injustice,  and  official  peculation 
in  its  magistracies  than  we  have  in  ours^and  a 
great  deal  less  of  crime,  and  a  great  deal  more  both 
of  industry  and  high  morality  in  its  people  than  *j 

we  are  able  to  claim  in  our  own,  is  not  despisable, 
except  by  ignorance.  Their  only  misfortune  is 
that  they  have  been  too  stringently  educated ; 
chained  fast,  in  that  manner,  to  the  classic  lore  of 
their  fathers,  and  kept  back  from  the  progressive 
studies  of  natural  science ;  but  already  they  are 
creating  great  universities  to  repair  the  deficit. 
And  their  fearfully  intense  scholarship  will  put 
•them  very  soon  at  our  side  in  all  the  modern  ideas, 
sciences,  and  improvements,  and  they  will  stand 
forth  in  their  new  great  future  only  the  more 
conspicuous,  that  they  have  had  so  grand  a  past. 
And  God  forbid  that  they  ever  be  so  far  capti- 
vated by  our  dreadfully  inferior,  cheap  way  of  suf- 
frage, as  to  give  up  their  cadetship  way  of  promo- 
tion for  it ;  a  plan  that  has  put  the  whole  nation 
climbing  upward, and  will  keep  it  climbing,  to  the 
end  of  the  world — only  climbing  the  more  rapidly 
and  surely  now,  that  it  has  gotten  new  springs  of 
life  and  self-renewing  order.  Emerging  in  this 
manner  into  modern  ideas,  and  a  modern  career, 
China  will,  by  this  time,  be  the  supreme  world - 
wonder  of  history  and  historic  empire,  and  the 
clumsy  and  coarse  figure  we  make  in  /our  half- 


48  WOMEN'S  SUFFBAGE; 

qualified  magistracies  chosen  by  suffrage,  will 
not  be  as  impressive  as  most  of  us  would  like  to 
believe.  Though  perhaps  it  will  comfort  us  a 
little,  that  these  people  of  China  do  themselves 
maintain  a  suffrage  in  a  certain  lower  plane  of  life, 
where  it  makes  a  kind  of  volunteer  department 
for  their  benefit.  They  choose  a  class  of  elders, 
so  called,  who  are,  in  fact,  a  board  of  referees  for 
settling  their  controversies,  and  helping  them 
maintain  their  rights  when  oppressed  by  wrongs 
an  d  exactions  of  the  state  officers.  They  are  no  part 
of  the  government  any  more  than  arbitrators,  or  a 
vigilance  committee,  would  be  with  us;  and  yet 
the  government  allows  their  choice  to  simplify  its 
own  immense  complexities,  and  bring  the  people 
help  in  what  would  also  be  theirs.  * 

I  have  sketched  this  outline,  not  exactly  requir- 
ed by  the  argument,  simply  because  a  considerable 
dose  of  humility  is  needed  visibly,  to  cure  us  of 
the  nonsense,  which  having  first  infected  our  men 
with  undue  conceit  of  advancement,  is  now  infect- 
ing our  women  with  as  unreal  and  excessive  hope 
that  they  may  win  the  same.  There  is  much  less 
for  us  all  here  than  our  coarse  patriotic  fervors  as- 
sume, and  a  great  deal  less  for  women  than  for 
men.  If  the  scheme  of  suffrage  must  go  down,  it 
will  be  a  very  great  advantage  that  our  women 
are  not  in  it.  It  will  go  down,  if  at  all,  simply  by 
the  rotting  process  of  its  own  corruptions,  and  our 
ambitious  women  will  find  little  comfort  in  being 
the  bad  other  half  that  goes  down  with  it. 


THE  REFORM  AGAINST  NATURE.  4:9 


III. 

WOMAN  NOT  CREATED  OR  CALLED  TO  GOYERN. 

IT  was  a  point  made,  in  the  brief  chapter  pre- 
ceding, that  no  argument  for  women's  suffrage, 
based  on  the  equality,  or  equally  human  property 
of  women  with  men,  can  have  more  than  a  show 
of  validity ;  for  the  reason  that  men  and  women 
are,  to  some  very  large  extent,  unlike  in  kind ;  and 
it  may  be  so  far  unlike,  as  to  forbid  any  rational 
comparison  as  respects  equality;  and,  of  course, 
to  forbid  any  such  inference  of  right  for  women 
because  that  right  is  accorded  to  men.  It  be- 
comes, in  this  view,  a  matter  of  consequence  to 
inquire  whether  the  supposed  unlikeness  of  kind 
includes  matters  of  distinction  that  amount  to  a 
proper  disqualification,  or  which  really  forbid,  as 
contrary  to  nature,  the  extension  of  any  such  politi- 
cal right  to  women. 

It  is  not  to  be  denied  that  women  are  made  in 
the  image  of  God  as  truly  as  men,  having  faculties 
and  categories  of  mind  that  are  equal  in  number, 
and  so  far  similar  in  kind,  as  to  pass  under  the 
same  general  names.  What  is  right  and  true  to 

3 


50 

one  sex,  is  right  and  true  also  to  the  other.  They 
think  by  the  same  laws,  they  perceive,  and  judge, 
and  remember,  and  will,  and  love,  and  hate,  in  the 
exercise  of  functions  that  compose  personalities 
psychologically  similar,  however  different  in  de- 
gree, and  however  differently  tempered,  fibered, 
tensified,  and  toned  for  action.  In  a  word,  they 
are  equally  human,  and  compared  with  orders  of 
being  above  and  below  them  are  of  the  same  kind. 
And  yet  in  their  relationship  of  sex,  within  their 
own  human  order,  they  are  so  widely  different, 
nevertheless,  that  the  distinction  never  misses  ob- 
servation. Their  very  personality,  which  even 
seemed  identical  in  the  inventory,  taking  on  sex- 
hood,  becomes  broadly  differential  in  that  fact,  and 
submits  to  a  deep-set,  dual  classification. 

A  mere  glance  at  the  two  sexes,  externally  rela- 
ted, suggests  some  very  wide  distinction  of  mold 
whatever  it  be.  The  man  is  taller  and  more  mus- 
cular, has  a  larger  brain,  and  a  longer  stride  in 
his  walk.  The  woman  is  lighter  and  shorter,  and 
moves  more  gracefully.  In  physical  strength  the 
man  is  greatly  superior,  and  the  base  in  his  voice 
and  the  shag  on  his  face,  and  the  swing  and  sway 
of  his  shoulders,  represent  a  personality  in  him 
that  has  some  attribute  of  thunder.  But  there  is 
no  look  of  thunder  in  the  woman.  Her  skin  is  too 
finely  woven,  too  wonderfully  delicate  to  be  the 
rugged  housing  of  thunder.  Her  soft,  upper  octave 
voice,  her  smaU  hands,  her  features  played  as  in 


THE  REFORM  AGAINST  NATURE.  51 

quality  and  not  for  quantity,  her  complexion 
played  as  if  there  were  a  principle  of  beauty  liv- 
ing under  it  —  there  is  abundance  of  expression  ^f^g  / 


here,  as  rnany  great,  proud  souls  of  heroes  have  & 

been  finding  in  all  ages,  but  it  is  unOlympic  as 


possible  in  kind.  Glancing  thus  upon 
look  says,  Force,  Authority,  Decision,  Self-assert- 
ing  Counsel,  Yictory.  And  the  woman  as  evi- 
dently  says,  "  I  will  trust,  and  be  cherished,  and 
give  sympathy  and  take  ownership  in  the  victor, 
and  double  his  honors  by  the  honors  I  contribute 
myself."  They  are  yet  one  species,  but  if  they 
were  two,  they  would  be  scarcely  more  unlike. 
So  very  wide  is  the  unlikeness,  that  they  are  a 
great  deal  more  like  two  species,  than  like  two 
varieties.  Their  distinction  of  sex  puts  them  in 
different  classes  of  being,  only  they  are  classes  so 
nearly  unified  by  their  unlikeness,  that  they  com- 
pose a  whole,  so  to  speak,  of  humanity,  by  their 
common  relationshin/One  is  the  force  principle,  the 
other  is  the  beauty  principle.  One  is  the  forward, 
pioneering  mastery,  the  out-door  battle-ax  of  pub- 
lic war  and  family  providence  ;  the  other  is  the  in- 
door faculty,  covert,  as  the  law  would  say,  and 
complementary,  mistress  and  dispenser  of  the  en- 
joyabilities.  |  Enterprise  and  high  counsel  belongJ 
to  one,  also  tcTbatter  the  severities  of  fortune,  con- 
quer the  raw  material  of  supply  ;  ornamentation, 
order,  comfortable  use,  all  flavors,  and  garnishes, 
and  charms  to  the  other.  The  man,  as  in  father- 


52  WOMEN'S  SUFFRAGE; 

hood,  carries  the  name  and  flag  ;  the  woman,  as  in 
motherhood,  takes  the  name  on  herself  and  puts 
it  on  her  children,  passing  out  of  sight  legally,  to 
be  a  covert  nature  included  henceforth  in  her 
husband.  They  are  positivity  and  receptivity, 
they  are  providence  and  use,  they  are  strength 
and  beauty,  they  are  mass  and  color,  they  are 
store-house  and  table,  they  are  substance  and  rel- 
ish, and  nothing  goes  to  its  mark  or  becomes  a 
real  value  till  it  passes  both. 

But  we  are  dealing,  so  far,  in  this  outward  de- 
lineation of  the  sexual  distinctions,  in  matters 
general,  and  have  not  taken  up,  as  yet,  the  more 
particular  matter  at  issue  in  our  question  of  suf- 
frage. The  precise  point  here  to  be  observed,  is 
that  masculinity  carries,  in  the  distribution  of  sex, 
the  governmental  function.  The 


the  brave-and-dare  element,  whether  toward  na- 
ture or  against  human  opposers,  the  responsible 
engineering  of  place  and  work  and  calling,  all 
determinations  outward,  whether  toward  ene- 
mies, or  among  causes,  or  in  ventures  of  commerce, 
or  in  diplomatic  treaties  and  warlike  relations  of 
peoples,  belong  to  man  and  to  what  may  be  called 
his  manly  prerogative.  That  is,  man  is  to  gov- 
ern ;  all  government  belongs  to  men.  Not  that 
women  are  never  set  in  kingly  positions  to  repre- 
sent, or  personate  the  kingly  power  ;  of  that  I 
shall  speak  hereafter  in  another  place.  For  the 
present,  I  simply  remark,  that  the  authority  they 


THE  KEFORM  AGAINST  NATURE.        53 

wield  in  such  cases  is  only  what  the  masculine 
traditions  put  upon  them,  or  into  them,  when  they 
are  used  to  fill  the  gaps  of  kinghood,  by  main- 
taining the  court  pageantries  and  the  royal  sig- 
nature ;  they  do  not  reign  as  kings  do  by  an  au- 
thority that  is  largely  personal  in  themselves. 
Were  they  obliged  to  maintain  themselves  in  that 
way,  it  would  very  soon  be  discovered  how  little 
authority  there  is  in  women.  We  take  pleasure 
not  seldom  in  allowing  women  to  rule  us  by  the 
volunteering  deference  we  pay  to  their  woman- 
hood ;  we  often  talk  of  our  loyalty  to  the  sex ;  but 
we  never  see  the  woman  who  can  hold  a  particle 
of  authority  in  us  by  her  own  positive  rule  or  the 
emphasis  of  her  own  personality. 

To  prevent  misunderstanding  it  may  be  proper 
to  say  that  I  am  not  asserting  a  right  here  in  men 
to  bolt  upon  women,  wives  for  example,  in  the  per- 
emptory way  of  command ;  I  am  only  asserting 
the  natural  leadership,  the  decision-power,  the  de- 
terminating will  of  the  house  and  the  state,  as 
belonging  to  men.  Certain  engineering  questions, 
for  example,  must  be  settled,  the  question  of 
expenditure  as  related  to  income,  the  question  of 
residence,  occupation,  emigration  ;  where  of  course 
every  endeavor  should  be  made  to  compose  differ- 
ences of  feeling  and  judgment,  and  settle  points  by 
agreement.  But  if  a  case  arises,  where  agreement 
is  impossible,  one  of  the  two,  clearly,  must  decide, 
and  it  must  be  the  man.  The  woman's  law  of 


54: 

allegiance,  sometimes  a  hard  one,  requires  it  of  her 
to  adhere  to  the  man,  submit  herself  to  his  for 
tunes,  and  go  down  with  him  bravely,  when  his 
day  of  disaster  comes.  The  sway,  the  determina- 
ting mastership,  must  so  far  be  with  him,  and  it 
can  not  be  anywhere  else,  without  some  very  de- 
plorable consequences  to  his  manhood.  If  he  has 
no  sway-force  in  him  equal  to  this,  no  authority  of 
will  and  council  that  enables  him  to  hold  the  reins, 
he  is  no  longer  what  nature  means  when  she 
makes  a  man.  And  the  refractory  woman  who 
has  so  far  balked  his  manhood  will  have  honored 
herself  quite  as  little  as  him. 

Happily,  it  is  just  as  natural  to  women  to  main- 
tain this  beautiful  allegiance  to  the  masterhood 
and  governing  sway-force  of  men,  both  in  the  fam- 
ily and  the  state,  as  we  could  wish  it  to  be. 
Nothing,  in  fact,  is  more  touching  than  to  see  how 
far  they  will  go,  how  much  they  will  bear,  how 
absurdly  persist  in  dressing  up  the  masculine  idol 
they  have  undertaken  to  crown,  or  exalt.  They 
do  no  such  thing  toward  other  women,  they  totally 
disown  the  authority  of  women,  and  can  not  even 
think  it  possible  for  women  to  preside  in  their 
assemblies.  They  do  not  ask,  it  may  be,  how,  or 
why  it  is  that  they  insist  on  having  a  man  to  pre- 
side? but  if  they  could  see  the  reason,  as  it  lies  in 
the  inner  feeling,  they  would  discover  in  it  a 
most  complete  refutation  of  their  claim  of  suffrage 
itself.  Looking  on  their  chairman — a  man,  and 


THE   REFORM   AGAINST   NATURE.  55 

why  a  man  ? — they  would  confess  that,  by  that 
sign,  their  very  cause  is  convicted  of  incongruity. 
Or  if  it  occurs  to  them  to  urge,  in  excuse,  that 
women  have  no  experience  in  the  ordering  of 
assemblies,  they  can  be  more  easily  qualified,  than 
they  can  to  make  a  speech.  They  are,  some  of 
them,  quick  enough  to  learn  Jefferson's  Manual 
quite  through,  in  half  a  day.  Probably  enough, 
too,  the  man  they  have  chosen,  never  before  pre- 
sided over  an  assembly  in  his  life. 

Now  the  right  of  suffrage  as  demanded  for 
women,  is  itself  a  function  of  government.  Besides, 
it  contemplates  also,  as  an  integral  part  of  the  pro- 
posed reform,  that  women  should  be  eligible  to 
office.  For  if  this  were  not  conceded,  we  know 
perfectly  beforehand,  that  the  women  voters  would 
so  wield  their  balance  of  power  as  to  conquer  the 
right  of  office  in  a  very  short  time.  All  office 
must,  of  course,  be  open  to  them,  as  certainly  as 
the  polls  are  open.  Indeed  they  sometimes  take 
the  jubilant  mood  even  now,  in  their  anticipation 
of  the  day,  when  they  will  have  their  seat  in  Con- 
gress, on  the  bench  of  justice,  in  the  President's 
cabinet,  and  why  not  in  the  chair  of  the  Presi- 
dency itself?  when  the  missions  abroad,  the  col- 
lectorships,  the  marshal  and  police  functions,  will 
be  theirs,  and  finally,  the  heroic  capabilities  of 
women  so  far  discovered,  as  to  allow  them  a  place 
in  the  command  of  fleets  and  armies,  and  full 
chance  given  their  ambition,  to  win,  as  for  solid 


56 

history,  what  many  call  the  mythic  honors  of  a 
Semiramis  or  a  Deborah. 

The  claim  put  forward  then  is,  and  will  be  com- 
monly allowed  to  be,  a  claim  of  authority ;  a  claim  by 
women  to  govern,  or  be  forward  in  the  government 
of  men ;  wherein  they  deny,  in  fact,  a  first  distinc- 
tion of  their  sex.  The  claim  of  a  beard  would  not 
be  a  more  radical  revolt  against  nature.  It  says : 
"  give  us  force,  give  us  the  forward  right,  give  us 
authority,  let  us  take  our  turn  also  at  the  thunder." 
Just  contrary  to  this,  I  feel  obliged  to  assert  the 
natural  subordination  of  women.  They  are  put 
under  authority  by  their  nature  itself,  and  if  they 
will  not  take  it  as  their  privilege  to  be,  if  they  call 
it  insult  and  oppression,  they  set  a  character  on 
their  position  which  no  man  could ;  they  put  con- 
tempt themselves  on  their  womanhood.  Indeed, 
their  very  claim  of  suffrage  on  the  ground  of 
their  equality  with  men,  ignores  just  what  is 
most  distinctive  in  their  kind,  and  is  neither 
more  nor  less  than  a  challenge  of  the  rights 
of  masculinity.  And  the  harshest  thing  that 
can  be  said  of  their  reform  would  be,  that  they 
mean  it  as  it  is. 

Asserting  in  this  very  decisive  manner  the  natu- 
ral submission  of  women,  and  their  very  certain 
lack,  whether  as  respects  the  right  or  the  fact,  of 
authority,  it  will  seem  to  many,  as  I  very  much 
fear,  to  be  a  harsh,  or  even  a  rude  and  coarse  attack 
upon  their  sex.  If  it  is  so  taken,  it  certainly  need 


THE   REFORM   AGAINST    NATURE.  57 

not  be.  We  Americans  take  up  some  very  crude 
notions  of  subordination,  as  if  it  implied  inferior 
quality,  character,  power.  ~No  such  thing  is  true, 
or  less  than  plainly  false.  Subordination  is  one 
thing,  inferiority  an  immensely  different  thing. 
Subordinate  as  they  are,  in  their  naturally  sheltered 
relation,  I  seriously  doubt  whether  we  should  not 
also  assert  their  superiority.  They  do  quite  as 
much,  and  I  strongly  suspect,  more  for  the  world. 
Their  moral  nature  is  more  delicately  perceptive. 
Their  religious  inspirations,  or  inspirabilities,  put 
them  closer  to  God,  as  having  a  more  celestial 
property  and  affinities  more  superlative.  It  may  be 
that  men  have  larger  quantity  in  the  scale  of  tal- 
ent, while  yet  they  are  enough  coarser  in  the  grain 
of  their  quality  to  more  than  balance  the  score. 

Quality  of  brain,  whatever  we  may  say  of  size, 
can  not  be  less  than  a  matter  of  chief  significance, 
and  the  fiber  of  a  woman's  brain  is  likely  to  be  as 
much  finer  as  the  fiber  of  her  skin  ;  capable  also, 
for  that  reason,  of  a  more  delicately  feeling  and 
bright  insight,  a  more  dramatic  fancy-play,  and  a 
facility  and  grace  of  movement  far  more  closely 
related  to  beauty.  And  who  of  us,  making  due 
account  of  the  late  admirable  works  of  genius  pre- 
sented by  our  women  authors,  has  not  sometimes 
been  taken  hold  of  secretly  by  the  question,  wheth- 
er finally  a  new  age  of  literature  is  not  coming 
on  the  world,  in  the  mental  unfolding  of  this  other 
hitherto  but  half-discovered  half  of  the  race.  Or 
3* 


58  WOMEN'S  SUFFRAGE; 

if  we  talk  of  inspirations  and  the  inspired  forces  of 
genius,  have  we  no  reason  to  imagine  that,  when 
the  more  divinely  impregnate  thought  of  the 
womanly  souls  is  born,  we  shall  see  a  divine 
daughterhood  that  has  more  than  sonship  in  it,  a 
finer  and  more  glorifiable  humanity.  Mary  her- 
self— was  she  not  subordinate  to  Joseph?  But  she 
was  not  therefore  inferior. 

And  if  we  should  be  obliged,  in  this  way,  to  ad- 
mit that  the  womanly  nature,  all  over  the  world, 
is  instinctively  submitted  to  the  manly  nature, 
must  we  for  that  reason  judge  that  woman  is  less 
honored,  less  divinely  gifted,  lower  in  the  scale  of 
possibilities  ? 

What  are  we  doing  in  fact,  even  now  and 
always,  but  submitting  our  manhood  to  her  in 
another  and  different  way  of  submission,  that  im- 
plies a  tribute  of  homage  more  tenderly  delicate 
and  voluntary,  and  more  beautiful  to  look  upon 
than  any  that  can  possibly  be  rendered,  either  by 
her  or  by  us,  on  the  so  much  desired  footing  of 
equality.  Equality !  Great  heaven  !  are  we  so 
blind  as  to  think  no  beauty  possible  in  these  terms 
of  sexhood,  because  they  import  relations  of  differ- 
ence ?  Must  humanity  become  a  bin  of  seeds  all 
just  alike,  before  we  can  be  patient  with  our  part 
in  it  ?  And  again,  to  make  up  the  beauty  and  true 
interest  of  life,  why  should  not  our  children  insist 
on  being  born  at  a  point  past  majority,  with  their 
teeth  and  beards  already  grown,  and  their  old  peo- 


THE    REFORM   AGAINST   NATURE.  59 

pie's  wisdoms  ripened  before  experience?  "Why 
this  odious,  never  to  be  endured  inequality  ?  How 
strange  indeed,  how  cross  to  our  best  notions  of 
justice,  and  of  true  social  equity  and  beauty,  that 
parents  are  born  older  than  their  children,  getting 
rights  that  include  no  equal  vote  at  all,  and  that 
vary  in  as  many  grades  and  colors  as  the  fit  care 
and  discipline  of  so  many  ages  require. 

But  there  is  an  aspect  of  privilege,  in  this  matter 
of  subordination,  which,  instead  of  inferring  the 
inferiority  of  women,  gives  them,  when  morally 
considered,  the  truest  and  sublimest  conditions  of 
ascendency.  The  highest  virtues,  purest  in  motive 
and  really  most  difficult,  are  never  to  be  looked 
for  in  the  most  forward  and  potentially  regnant 
states.  They  belong  rather  to  the  subject  condi- 
tions, where  the  coarse  admixtures  of  pride  and 
worldly  power  are  shut  away.  "We  get  the  true 
analogy  here  in  the  great  domain  of  nature,  where 
the  coarse  and  forceful  causes  seem  to  be  doing 
every  thing,  and  yet,  in  all  finest,  truest  estimates 
of  power,  do  comparatively  nothing.  The  sun 
blazes  and  burns,  the  volcanoes  burst  and  bury 
cities  with  ashes,  the  earthquakes  rock  and  rend, 
the  comets  blaze  on  the  sky,  and  the  fierce  wind- 
storms tear  it ;  and  these  and  such  like  make  up,  as 
we  think,  the  supreme  causes  to  which  all  the  hum- 
blest ingredients  of  our  landscapes  are  of  course 
inferior.  And  yet,  if  we  come  to  the  true  scale  of 
honors  gotten  upon  human  feeling,  or  in  it,  these 


60  WOMEN'S  SUFFEAGE; 

same  humbler,  these  inferior  things  of  the  land- 
scapes are,  in  fact,  immensely  superior,  and  the 
others  have  but  a  hundredth  part  of  the  signifi- 
cance. The  dews,  the  grasses,  the  green  life  of 
the  trees,  the  fragrant  breath  of  the  mornings,  the 
sunset  colors  on  the  clouds  and  the  hills,  the 
springs  that  break  out  under  them,  and  the  brooks 
leaping  down  their  slopes,  the  songs  of  the  birds, 
tKe  feeding  of  cattle  in  their  pastures — the  inven- 
tory is  a  long  one ;  who  can  tell  what  is  in  it,  or 
how  much  ?  This  only  we  know,  that  the  great 
world-forces  holding  sway  and  swinging  above  are 
scarcely  appreciable,  in  comparison  with  the  finer 

-  things  of  beauty  they  subordinate.  We  do  not 
half  as  much  respect  or  feel  the  dominating  forces 
I  of  the  world  as  we  do  the  dominated  graces.  Or 
if  certain  gross,  coarse-judging  souls,  will  think 
great  things  are  done  for  them  only  by  causes  that 
bruise  and  batter,  and  that  other  things  subordi- 
nate to  these  are  of  course  inferior,  these  latter 
still  will  not  be  inferior  even  to  them.  After  all, 
the  woman  things  of  the  world,  the  patient-work- 
ing, unobtrusive,  graceful  causes  will  be  doing 
more. 

Under  this  analogy,  we  perceive  how  force,  by 
its  own  nature,  always  and  of  course  subordinates 

L-beauty.  And  it  is  just  as  true  in  things  moral  and 
spiritual  as  in  things  natural.  Only  they  that  are 
humble  can  be  exalted  ;  only  the  last  can  be  first. 
The  highest,  finest  molds  of  good,  are  grown  only 


THE  REFORM  AGAINST  NATURE.        6L 

in  the  lowliest  and  most  subject  conditions.  Was 
Mary  inferior  because  she  was  a  lowly,  subject 
woman  ?  "Was  her  holy  thing,  her  son,  inferior 
because  he  was  subject,  in.  his  beautiful  childhood, 
and  subject  all  his  life  long,  down  to  the  last 
hour's  breath  and  the  last  nail  driven?  Many  have 
imagined  that  they  discovered  in  Jesus  both  a 
manly  and  a  womanly  nature,  and  that  he  became 
the  perfect  one,  because  in  this  union  he  was  able, 
in  so  great  force  and  authority,  to  bear  so  many 
things  with  a  gentle  submission  and  an  unfalter- 
ing patience. 

There  can  not,  in  this  view,  be  a  greater  mistake, 
or  one  that  indicates  a  coarser  apprehension,  than 
when  our  women,  agitating  for  the  right  of  suffrage, 
take  it  as  an  offense  against  their  natural  equality, 
that  they  are  not  allowed  to  help  govern  the 
world.  It  is  as  if  the  gentle  mignonnette  and  vio- 
let were  raised  in  protest  against  the  regal  dahlia, 
when  they  are  in  truth  a  great  deal  more  poten- 
tially regnant  themselves.  "What  do  these  women 
ask,  in  fact,  but  to  be  weighed  in  the  gross  weight- 
scales  of  force,  making  nothing  of  that  higher, 
finer  nature,  by  which  God  expects  it  of  them  to 
flavor  the  world.  They  must  govern,  they  must 
go  into  the  fight,  they  must  bruise  and  batter 
themselves — what  are  they  equal  to,  if  they  are 
not  equal  to  men  ?  As  if  it  were  nothing,  a  little 
way  back,  after  all  the  coarse  things  of  the  world 
are  done,  to  govern,  by  graces,  the  men  that  gov- 


62  WOMEN'S  SUFFRAGE; 

ern  by  forces,  and  go  through  family  and  country, 
and  the  times,  with  a  ministry  more  powerful, 
finer  in  the  motive,  less  mixed  with  selfishness  and 
will,  and  just  as  much  closer  to  the  really  celestial 
type  of  good.  God  save  us  from  the  loss  of  this 
better,  almost  divinely  superior  ministry  ;  for  lost 
it  will  assuredly  be,  when  our  women  have  come 
down  to  be  litigators  with  us  in  the  candidacies, 
contests,  and  campaigns  of  political  warfare.  Still 
life  is  then  no  more,  and  the  man  who  goes  home 
at  night  from  his  caucus  fight,  or  campaign  speech, 
goes  in,  not  to  cease  and  rest,  but  to  be  dinned 
with  the  echo,  or  perhaps  bold  counter-echo  of  his 
own  harsh  battle.  The  kitchen  dins  the  parlor, 
and  one  end  of  the  table  dins  the  other.  Up- 
stairs, down-stairs,  in  the  lady's  chamber — every 
where  the  same  harsh  gong  is  ringing,  from  year  to 
year.  Oh  !  if  we  could  get  away  !  how  many  will 
then  say  it,  arid  pray  it — into  some  bright  corner 
where  yet  there  are  true  women  left — women  with 
soft  voices,  shrilled  by  no  brassiness  or  dinging 
sound  of  party  war  ! 

Why,  if  our  women  could  but  see  what  they  are 
doing  now,  what  superior  grades  of  beauty  and 
power  they  fill,  and  how  far  above  equality  with 
men  they  rise,  when  they  keep  their  own  pure 
atmosphere  of  silence,  and  their  field  of  peace,  how 
they  make  a  realm  into  which  the  poor  bruised 
fighters,  with  their  passions  galled,  and  their 
minds  scarred  with  wrong — their  hates,  disap- 


THE   REFORM  AGAINST   NATURE.  63 

pointments,  grudges,  and  hard-worn  ambitions — 
may  come  in,  to  be  quieted,  and  civilized,  and  get 
some  touch  of  the  angelic,  I  think  they  would  be 
very  little  apt  to  disrespect  their  womanly  subor- 
dination. It  will  signify  any  thing  but  their  infe- 
riority. If  they  are  already  taken  with  the  foolish 
ambition  of  place,  or  of  winning  a  public  name, 
they  may  not  be  satisfied.  But  in  that  case  they 
barter  for  this  honor  a  great  deal  more  than  they 
can  rightly  spare.  God's  highest  honors  never  go 
with  noise,  but  they  wait  on  silent  worth,  on  the 
consciousness  of  good,  on  secret  charities,  and 
ministries  untainted  by  ambition.  Could  they  but 
say  to  the  noisy  nothings  of  this  bribery,  "  Get 
thee  hence,  Satan,"  as  Christ  did  to  the  same 
coarse  nonsense  of  flattery,  they  would  keep  their 
subject-way  of  life  as  he  kept  his,  and  would  think 
it  honor  enough  that  they  also  came  not  to  be  min- 
istered unto,  but  to  minister.  And  if  it  be  the 
question  for  them,  whether  it  is  better  to  be  classed 
in  privilege  with  Jesus  the  subject,  or  with  Csesar 
the  sovereign,  it  should  not  be  difficult  to  decide. 
Thus  far  we  go  in  the  principle  that  women  are 
made  to  be  subordinate,  and  men  to  be  the  for- 
ward operators  and  dominating  authorities  of  the 
world.  They  have  another  field,  where  their 
really  finer  qualities  and  more  inspirable  gifts 
may  get  full  room  and  scope  for  the  most  effective 
and  divinest  offices  of  life.  Indeed  we  do  not 
evenly  set  the  balance  of  the  question,  if  we  do  not 


64:  WOMEN'S  SUFFRAGE; 

say  that  woman  has  her  government  as  truly  as 
man,  only  it  is  not  political,  not  among  powers,  and 
laws,  and  public  causes.  He  governs  from  with- 
out downward,  and  she  from  within  upward,  and 
though  there  be  a  great  difference  of  kind  between 
our  two  words  master  and  mistress,  using  this  lat- 
ter in  its  true,  good  sense,  there  is  not  a  whit  more 
of  control  signified,  when  we  say  that  the  man  is 
the  mastering  power  of  the  woman,  than  that  she 
is  the  mistressing  power  of  the  man.  He  is  at 
a  point  of  sway  more  coarse,  direct,  and  absolute — 
more  nearly  akin  to  force.  She  is  at  a  point 
where  she  captivates  the  force,  by  a  beautiful  and 
right  enjoyment  of  it,  takes  possession  of  the  man, 
property,  and  soul,  and  will,  and  calling,  and 
makes  him  joyfully  her  own.  If  the  cases  were 
inverted,  he  would  make  a  coarse,  awkward  figure 
doubtless  in  the  mistressing  kind  of  government ; 
but  if  we  are  to  agitate  for  equality,  why  should 
he  not  have  the  beautiful  chance  given  him  of  be- 
ing a  mistress-power  in  life — on  the  score  of  equal- 
ity, even  as  she  obtains  a  mastering  power  in  life, 
when  she  obtains  the  suffrage.' 

As  regards  this  right  of  priority  and  pioneering 
headship  in  man,  and  the  so  far  subordinate  and 
subject  state  in  woman,  implying  still  no  superi- 
ority in  him,  and  more  than  possible  superiority 
in  her,  we  have  another  illustration  furnished  by 
religion,  that  to  such  as  have  a  true  insight  of 
the  Christian  plan  or  economy,  will  be  strikingly 


THE  REFORM  AGAINST  NATURE.        65 

apt  and  impressive.  I  refer  to  what  is  called  the 
law  and  the  gospel,  as  mutually  related  to  each 
other.  The  law,  which  is  the  man,  goes  before, 
rough-hewing  the  work  of  government.  It  is  Si- 
nai-like, and  speaks  in  thunder.  It  commands, 
and,  by  sanctions  of  force,  where  force  is  wanted, 
vindicates  its  own  supreme  authority.  It  so  far 
has  priority  in  rule,  that  it  never  can  have  any 
thing  less ;  for  the  cessation  of  law  is  the  cessa- 
tion of  government,  and  if  it  should  only  fall  into 
second  place  or  equal  place  with  any  thing  else, 
it  would  lose  the  inherent  sovereignty  of  its  na- 
ture, when,  of  course,  it  can  be  law  no  longer. 
The  gospel,  meantime,  coming  after  in  order  is 
the  woman.  It  is  subject  as  gospel  to  the  hus- 
band, that  is,  to  the  law ;  it  is  made  under  the 
law ;  and  the  whole  historic  operation,  by  which 
it  is  organized,  is  itself  obedience,  submission,  love, 
and  sacrifice.  And  it  is  so  perfectly  subject  to  the 
law,  that  it  professes  nothing  but  a  fulfillmen  tof 
the  law,  and  a  universal  recovery  to  it.  Setting 
up  for  equality  with  law,  or  for  itself,  as  having 
good  right  to  assert  and  advance  itself,  is  never  so 
much  as  thought  of;  if  it  can  but  write  the  law 
on  the  heart  of  transgressors,  all  its  wifely  ends 
or  ambitions  are  answered.  And  this  it  is  sup- 
posed to  do,  by  what  is  called  grace ;  that  is,  by  a 
way  of  approach  so  gentle,  so  winsome,  and 
lovely,  and  close  to  the  manner  of  true  womanly 
grace,  as  to  be  another,  more  effective,  side  of  the 


66  WOMEN'S  SUFFRAGE  ; 

divine  power ;  that  which  is  the  power  of  God 
unto  salvation. 

And  now  suppose  the  question  to  be  raised, 
which  of  these  is  superior — works  iu  the  highest 
talent,  does  the  greatest  things,  takes  largest  hold 
of  the  future,  bears  the  loftiest  inspirations,  has 
most  beauty  of  God'  in  it,  and  really  displays  the 
finest,  most  etherealizing  power?  Undoubtedly  it  is 
the  gospel.  It  goes  above  the  law  in  doing  every 
thing  for  it,  and  overtops  it  in  glory,  by  submission 
to  it.  No  power  is  in  it,  but  the  power  of  suffering 
and  a  subject  state.  It  lives  in  sorrow  and  dies 
in  sacrifice,  and  accomplishes  just  what  the  law, 
in  "  that  it  was  weak,"  could  not  accomplish.  The 
coarse  ideas  of  force,  and  majesty,  and  all  the 
pomps  and  thunders  of  enforcement  are  omitted 
here,  and  the  simple  wifehood  of  God's  love,  and 
beauty,  is  revealed,  by  what  is  lowliest  and  most 
dejected.  And  this  is  grace,  the  world-transform- 
ing grace  in  which  God's  empire  culminates. 

And  yet  our  women  will  not  have  their  subor- 
dinate, or  subject  state,  because  it  makes  them 
inferior !  They  want,  alas !  the  culture  of  soul 
that  is  wanted  to  see  the  superiority  to  which  they 
are  elected.  They  come  in  the  wedding  grace  of 
their  Cana,  or  the  suffering  grace  of  their  Calvary, 
and  insist  on  their  right  to  be  Sinai,  and  play  the 
thunders  too  themselves.  "  Give  us  also  power," 
they  say ;  and  power  to  them  is  force,  or  an  equal 
right  of  command.  A  most  miserable  and  really 


THE   KEFOKM   AGAINST   NATURE.  67 

low  misconception,  if  only  they  had  grace  to  see  it. 
Here  is  their  true  power,  in  a  disinterested  and 
subject  life  of  good.  And  there  is  a  way  in  this  to 
govern  men,  that  is  greatness  itself  and  victory. 
What  can  the  woman  do  that  wants  to  vote,  in 
order  to  be  somewhat,  but  fume,  and  chafe,  and 
tear,  under  what  she  calls  the  wrongs  of  her  hus- 
band— so  to  make  her  weakness  more  weak,  and 
her  defeat  more  miserable — when  if  she  could  only 
consent  to  be  true  gospel  and  woman  together,  to 
be  gentle,  and  patient,  and  right,  and  fearless,  how 
certainly  would  she  come  out  superior  and  put  him 
at  her  feet.  There  seems  to  me,  in  this  view,  I  con- 
fess, to  be  a  something  sacred,  or  angelic,  in  such 
womanhood.  The  morally  grandest  sight  we  see 
in  this  world  is  a  real  and  ideally  true  woman. 
Send  her  to  the  polls  if  you  will,  give  her  an  office, 
set  the  Hon.  before  her  name,  and  by  that  time 
she  is  nobody. 

As  regards  this  question  of  suffrage,  or  the  al- 
lowing of  suffrage  to  women,  there  is  yet  another 
way  of  constructing  the  argument,  which,  though 
it  may  not  be  another,  may  be  more  convincing  to 
some,  viz. : — that  the  male  and  female  natures  to- 
gether constitute  the  proper  man,  and  are,  there- 
fore, both  represented  in  the  vote  of  the  man. 
And  the  radical  idea  here  assumed  of  the  com- 
posite unity  of  the  two,  is  attested,  in  fact,  all 
over  the  world,  in  one  form  or  another,  and  in 


68  WOMEN'S  SUFFRAGE; 

different  modes  and  degrees,  whenever  a  marriage 
puts  them  in  connection  as  husband  and  wife. 
The  woman  passes  under  shelter  and  protection, 
so  far  as  even  to  drop  her  family  name,  and  be 
only  known  under  the  family  name  of  her  husband. 
In  the  English  common  law  she  is  said  to  be 
femme  covert,  a  woman  who  is  included,  as  re- 
spects all  civil  rights,  in  her  husband.  Her  per- 
sonality is  so  far  merged  in  his,  that  she  can  not 
bring  a  suit  any  more  in  her  own  name,  for  it  is  a 
name  no  longer  known  to  the  law.  The  assump- 
tion is  that,  being  in  and  of  her  husband,  he  will 
both  act  and  answer  for  her,  except  when  ar- 
raigned for  crime.  The  Roman  or  civil  law 
received  by  so  many  of  the  principal  nations  of 
the  world,  carries  similar  ideas  with  it,  asserting 
the  civil  absorption  of  the  wife  in  the  husband 
in  terms  but  slightly  qualified. 

The  Russian  law  and  the  Chinese  correspond. 
In  all  which  we  may  see  how  close  to  nature  runs 
the  impression  that  woman  is  a  complementary 
personality,  and  is  rightly  taken  to  exist  in  her 
husband,  as  she  passes  under  his  name  in  her 
marriage,  and  is  consentingly  covered  by  his  pro- 
tectorship. 

Hence  it  is  put  forward  by  some,  as  the  true 
answer  to  the  claim  of  women's  suffrage,  that  they 
are  already  represented  in  and  by  the  vote  of  their 
husbands.  But  this  again  is  only  saying  that  they 
will  be  duly  cared  for  and  protected,  by  the  voice 


THE   EEFOKM   AGAINST    NATURE.  69 

«• 

their  husbands  have  in  government,  when  they  do 
not  govern  for  themselves.  And  nothing  can  be 
assumed  more  safely  than  that ;  for  if  by  some 
lache  of  marital  attention,  helped  by  a  certain 
natural  gravitation  toward  injustice  when  atten- 
tion sleeps,  the  laws  may  sometimes  slip  or  subside 
into  ways  that  bear  oppressively  on  women,  the 
wrong  will  be  easily  rectified.  There  is  no  delibe- 
rate willingness  in  men  to  oppress  women ;  and  as 
soon  as  any  sufficient  reminder  comes,  and  a  real 
grievance  is  shown,  there  is  sure  to  be  some  ade- 
quate reform  that  redresses  the  wrong  discovered. 
Our  legislators,  have  abundantly  shown  their 
readiness,  and  even  zeal,  to  remove  every  sort  of 
harshness  in  the  laws  toward  women ;  they  make 
haste  in  it,  and  are  willing  even  to  go  beyond  the 
real  equity  and  do,  since  it  is  for  women,  more 
than  is  equal,  and  more  than  they  would  ask 
legislating  for  themselves.  If  they  want,  indeed, 
a  partial  legislation,  softer  and  more  favorable  than 
strict  equality,  their  surest  way  to  get  it  is  to  let 
it  be  the  legislation  of  men.  They  will  do  any 
thing  for  women  that  has  even  a  semblance  of 
right. 

|  What  matter  then  is  it,  whether  women  have  a 
representation  by  their  own  ballot  or  not  ?  Per- 
haps it  may  better  suit  their  ambition  to  be 
powers,  than  wards  of  the  state,  but  it  is  a  very 
fatuitous  and  really  most  unsentimental  ambition. 
Oh  !  if  we  could  only  be  assured  as  men,  that  we 


70 

should  be  governed  well,  and  safely  defended  in 
every  right,  secured  in  every  privilege,  without 
any  representation  at  all,  any  right  of  suffrage, 
what  better  and  more  halcyon  day  of  promise 
could  heaven  let  down  upon  us.  Such  government 
would  be  like  that  of  God -Himself.  There  is  no 
privilege  in  representation,  no  inherent  right  of  it 
in  any  state,  save  that,  as  rulers  are  themselves 
under  evil,  and  prone  to  ways  of  wrong  as  God  is 
not,  it  is  convenient  and  imparts  a  feeling  of 
security,  to  have  the  subjects  themselves  allowed 
a  voice  in  the  laws,  and  a  part  in  their  just  enforce- 
ment. It  is  no  first  principle  then,  as  our  new 
state  reformers  assume,  that  women  have  a  right 
of  representation  because  they  are  human ;  in  that 
way  a  right  of  suffrage ;  for  nobody  has  any  such 
right  of  representation,  if  only  he  can  be  well 
governed  without  such  right ;  and  women  are  as 
nearly  sure  of  that  as  they  can  be,  in  the  fact  that 
they  are  made  sure  by  the  vote  and  representation 
of  their  husbands. 

But  they  are  many  of  them  single  persons,  it 
may  be  urged,  and  have  therefore  no  husbands  by 
whose  vote  their  rights  may  be  protected.  On 
this  account  too  some  of  the  opposers  of  women' s 
suffrage,  apprehending  a  defect  in  their  argument 
based  in  the  representative  office  of  husbands,  have 
conceded  the  right  of  widows  and  single  women 
to  vote ;  only  requiring  them  to  lose  that  right 
when  they  pass  into  the  femme  covert  state. 


THE   REFORM   AGAINST   NATURE.  71 

But  this  would  open  a  way  for  innumerable  frauds, 
and  confusions  without  end.  Happily  the  whole 
cast  of  the  argument  is  mistaken.  Women  are  not 
changed  in  their  nature,  or  in  any  natural  right, 
hecause  they  are  married.  What  we  have  to  say 
is,  that  all  women  alike  are  made  to  be  married, 
whether  they  are  or  not.  The  sex -nature  of  men 
and  women  is  not  altered  by  marriage,  and  accord- 
ing to  that  sex-nature,  women  are  to  be  sheltered 
legally  by  men.  Government  is  not  given  them, 
but  protectors  are  given  them,  who  are  tender 
above  all  terms  of  equality.  So  that  if  it  were 
necessary  for  them  to  be  represented,  and  they  had 
a  right  to  be,  the  whole  female  order  would  be 
most  effectively  represented  in  the  whole  male 
order,  without  respect  to  any  chances,  or  mis- 
chances, of  marriage  whatever. 

And  so  there  is  to  be  secured  for  women  a  more 
benignant,  softer  kind  of  protectorship,  which  is 
bruised  and  battered  by  no  contests,  or  made  hard 
and  imperious  by  no  mere  dominations  of  force. 
Of  what  use  would  government  be,  if  all  fine  sen- 
timents and  gentle  deferences  and  loyalties  were 
killed  by  it  ?  And  there  must  be  room  for  these 
in  harbors  and  havens  one  side  of  the  storms ; 
where  only  soft  winds  blow,  and  silent  atmospheres 
and  breathings  are  allowed.  The  masculine  half- 
being  must  be  allowed  to  sink  into  the  bigger 
self  that  he  calls  his  home,  and  be  sheltered  in  the 
womanly  peace  he  has  protected,  for  the  gentler 


72  WOMEN'S  SUFFRAGE; 

and  more  dear  protection  of  his  own  more  stormy 
life.  Living  only  as  male  creatures  in  society  with 
male,  they  would  keep  their  pride,  their  will,  their 
dry  grudges,  and  self-seeking  torments,  and  these 
would  be  their  inventory.  It  is  only  when  they 
take  in  the  complementary  graces  of  a  domestic 
keeping — the  carefulness,  the  love,  the  beauty — 
that  they  save  moisture  enough  to  fully  and  com- 
pletely exist.  That  is  the  protectorship  of  men. 
This  is  the  protectorship  of  women.  And  if  the 
question  be  which  is  first  in  consequence,  dearest, 
and  most  necessary,  the  women  certainly  shall 
say  the  first,  and  the  men  quite  as  certainly  the 
last. 


THE  EEFOKM  AGAINST  NATURE.        73 


IY. 

SCRIPTURE  DOCTRINE  COINCIDES. 

HAPPILY,  we  are  not  obliged  to  hang  our 
opinions  in  this  matter  of  women's  suffrage  on 
the  moral  expositions  and  dictations  of  Scripture ; 
for  the  two  points  now  made  in  respect  to  the 
natural  subordination,  or  subject  state,  of  women, 
and  to  the  secondary,  complementary  office  they 
hold  in  filling  out  the  manhood  of  men,  when 
merged  politically  in  their  protectorship,  need  no 
scriptural  authority  to  support  them.  The  Scrip- 
ture has  nothing  to  say  of  this  matter,  which  is  at 
all  variant  from  what  we  see  with  our  eyes.  In- 
deed no  scripture  revelation,  which  at  all  dis- 
agrees with  the  bisexual  facts  of  our  existence  as 
they  are,  could  be  true,  or  have  any  authority  over 
the  revelations  made  by  such  facts.  The  scrip- 
ture revelations  might  interpret  the  revelations 
of  nature,  and  let  us  farther  into  their  meaning ; 
or  they  might  impart  new  disclosures  that  go 
farther  and  give  us  additional  knowledge ;  but 
I  do  not  see,  in  this  particular  case,  that  they  do 
either.  They  seem  to  merely  reiterate,  and  put  ,/ 
in  stronger  emphasis,  just  what  we  learn  by  the 


74  WOMEN'S  SUFFJRA/JE; 

sight  of  our  eyes — that,  and  nothing  more.  How- 
ever, a  great  many  minds  will  revert  almost  in- 
stinctively here  to  what  is  given  us  by  scripture 
authority,  and  will  ask  for  the  sentence  it  pro- 
pounds as  a  final  and  determinate  settlement,  so 
far,  of  the  questions  in  issue.  Besides,  we  only 
pay  a  decent  reverence  to  the  teachings  of  God, 
when  we  bring  our  questions  before  this  tribunal 
of  divine  authority  and  reason,  as  it  is  proposed 
in  this  chapter  to  do. 

Coming,  then,  to  the  Word,  what  saith  the 
Word  ?  Take  what  view  we  please  of  the  story  of 
the  creation,  it  scarcely  matters  as  far  as  this  par- 
ticular subject  is  concerned;  for  the  representa- 
tion is,  in  any  case,  that  the  woman  is  created, 
not  to  be  the  man's  re-duplication,  or  a  second 
man,  but  to  be  the  meet-helper  of  the  man.  She 
is  to  be  a  subsidiary  nature,  filling  out  the  com- 
plete humanity  of  the  man  ;  and  this  fact  is  figured 
in  a  way  of  representation  that  makes  her  nature 
derivative  from  his,  and  so  far  of  a  quality  at  once 
cognate  and  complementary.  "  And  Adam  said, 
this  is  now  bone  of  my  bone  and  flesh  of  my  flesh ; 
she  shall  be  called  woman,  because  she  was  taken 
out  of  man.  Therefore  shall  a  man  leave  his 
father  and  mother^  and  cleave  unto  his  wife,  and 
they  shall  be  one  flesh." 

So  the  parties  stand  in  the  scale  of  the  creation. 
They  are  one  flesh  as  being  two,  because  one  is 
the  complement  of  the  other.  Then  follows  the 


THE    KEFOKM   AGAINST   NATURE. 

precipitation  of  the  fall,  in  which  the  composite 
unity  becomes  a  bond  of  retributive  liability,  even 
as  every  other  blessing  is  touched  by  the  pangs 
of  disorder.  Before  it  was,  u  be  fruitful  and  mul- 
tiply ;  "  now  it  is,  to  the  subject  party,  "  in  sorrow 
shalt  thou  bring  forth  children ;  and  thy  desire 
shall  be  to  thy  husband,  and  he  shall  rule  over 
thee."  "What  before  was  only  a  protectoral  rela- 
tion, where  the  forward  nature  takes  the  subject 
into  care  and  dear  safe-keeping,  is  now  to  become 
a  partly  embittered  relation,  and  be  more  or  less 
galled  by  oppressions,  such  as  wrong-doers  in 
power  will  lay  on  the  subject  companions  God 
gave  to  their  protection.  "  Thy  desire  shall  be  to 
thy  husband."  This  interprets  no  more  the  real 
order  of  nature,  but  the  disorder  of  unnature ;  and 
how  sadly  and  how  heavy  with  sighing,  all  down 
the  after  ages,  has  the  sentence  been  repeating  its 
verifications ;  female  nature  suing,  as  it  were,  to 
male,  and  how  often,  alas !  getting  from  even  its 
love  itself  but  a  slack  appreciation  ;  sometimes 
burdens  unstinted  and  weary  homages  of  sorrow ; 
sometimes  only  roughness  and  neglectful  insolence. 
Yisibly  the  man  has  precedence  and  the  woman 
a  subordinate  lot,  only  it  is  no  more  the  sweet 
relationship  of  order  and  protective  sympathy 
originally  intended,  but  of  one  made  hard  and  dry 
by  the  partly  retributive  extirpations  of  love  and 
tenderness.  And  still,  under  so  many  repulses 
and  discouragements,  the  desire  of  the  woman  is, 


76 

none  the  less  fixedly,  to  the  man  and  to  his  rule, 
harsh  as  it  is  now  become  in  its  severity,  and  dis- 
mally distempered  by  the  abuse  of  power. 

We  descend  across  the  ages  to  the  times  and 
declared  maxims  of  the  New  Testament  -  era. 
Nothing,  of  course,  is  put  down  here  to  re-empha- 
size the  retributions  of  sin,  but  the  subordination 
of  the  woman  to  the  man,  and  the  complementary 
part  she  fills  in  the  sheltered  condition  of  her 
dependence,  is,  if  possible,  more  emphatically 
stated.  As  "  the  head  of  every  man  is  Christ,"  so 
"  the  head  of  the  woman  is  the  man  ; "  as  "  he  is 
the  image  and  [reflected]  glory  of  God,"  so  "  the 
woman  is  the  glory  of  the  man."  "  For  the  man 
is  not  of  the  woman,  but  the  woman  of  the  man. 
Neither  was  the  man  created  for  the  woman,  but 
the  woman  for  the  man."  "The  woman  is  to 
learn  in  silence,  with  all  subjection" — "not  to 
teach  nor  to  usurp  authority  over  the  man,  but  to 
be  in  silence." 

Now,  these  heavy  pronouncements  of  the  apos- 
tle come  down  with  a  kind  of  pounding  emphasis 
on  women,  that  sounds  harshly.  I  should  not  dare 
to  write  in  this  way,  and  scarcely  to  think  in  this 
way,  without  adding  something  that  is  more  ap- 
preciative and  more  delicately  respectful  both  to 
merit  and  feeling.  If  Paul  had  been  well  married, 
that  is,  to  such  a  wife  as  by  character  and  personal 
attractions  could  make  herself  the  mistress  every 
wife  should  be,  in  -the  respectful  homage  of  her 


THE   KEFOKM  AGAINST   NATUKE.  77 

husband,  I  think  he  would  have  learned  some 
things  about  women  which,  in  fact,  he  never  did 
learn,  and  would  have  been  as  much  more  cour- 
teous and  tenderly  gracious  in  his  words.  And  if 
he  had  lived  in  this  particular  age,  I  am  not  quite 
sure  that  he  would  have  had  as  much  to  say  of 
the  obedience  of  women ;  for  it  will  be  observed 
that  when  he  is  speaking  in  this  manner  he  is 
having  respect  almost  always  to  "  the  shame  "  re- 
ligion suffers  when  women  are  less  patient,  or  less 
quietly  subordinate,  under  the  frequently  dom- 
ineering rule  of  their  husbands,  than  the  man- 
ner of  the  age  requires.  The  point  which  has  so 
great  importance  with  him  is,  that  Christian  women 
shall  not  raise  an  accusation  of  scandal  against  the 
gospel,  by  the  boldness  of  their  liberty  in  the 
spirit  and  of  their  faith  in  Jesus.  Of  course 
Paul  did  not  know  every  thing,  whether  about 
women  or  any  other  subject  of  knowledge.  What 
the  Spirit  gave  him  he  knew,  and  for  all  other 
kinds  of  knowledge  he  was  on  a  footing  with  his 
age.  And,  in  this  view,  doing  justice  to  all  that 
he  positively  declares,  we  are  permitted  to  doubt 
whether  he  had  a  fully  rounded  conception  of  the 
finer  and  more  superlative  qualities  of  womanly 
talent.  Do  we  not  see,  in  fact,  that  womanly  gifts 
are  a  great  deal  higher  than  his  old-time  habit  and 
his  mere  bachelor  acquaintanceship  ever  allowed 
him  to  know? 

And  yet  he  is  perfectly  right  in  every  positive 


78  WOMEN'S  STJFFEAGE; 

utterance  and  moral  pronouncement  he  makes. 
So  far  he  indorses  and  sanctions  the'  grand  first 
truth  of  the  sexly  nature  seen  by  us  all ;  the  supe- 
rior headship  of  man,  and  the  subordinated,  com- 
plementary life  of  woman ;  and  so  the  base  note 
of  his  music  is  rightly  keyed.  And,  it  must  also 
be  said,  in  justice  to  his  seemingly  harsh  and 
somewhat  overbearing  dictations  or  casuistries, 
tli at  he  does  sometimes  contrive  to  give  a  less  des- 
potic and  more  thoughtfully  tender  look  to  the 
governing  right  of  husbands.  He  does  not  say, 
"  Assert  your  rights  and  put  your  women  in  their 
places,"  as  he  almost  seemed  to  be  doing  just 
now,  but  he  says,  "  Husbands,  love  your  wives, 
even  as  Christ  also  loved  the  church,  and  gave 
himself  for  it.  So  ought  men  to  love  their  wives 
as  their  own  bodies.  He  that  loveth  his  wife 
loveth  himself.  For  no  man  ever  yet  hated  his 
own  flesh,  but  nourisheth  and  cherisheth  it,  even 
as  the  Lord  the  church."  In  this  most  sacred 
bond  he  conceives  the  two  to  be,  in  some  sense, 
two  no  more,  a  man  and  a  woman,  but  "  one 
flesh"  rather  ;  practically  unified,  as  in  some  mys- 
tic consolidation — even  as  Christ  and  the  church 
is  made  one  by  what  he  calls  the  "great  mys- 
tery," their  secret  marriage  bond  in  the  Spirit.  In 
this  bond,  so  truly  sacred,  let  them  both  abide  as 
natures  sealed  for  unity ;  "  let  every  one  of  you,  in 
particular,  so  love  his  wife  even  as  himself — [an- 
other self]  ; — and  the  wife  see  that  she  reverence 


THE    REFORM   AGAINST   NATURE.  79 

her  husband."  He  is  husband  still,  and  she  is 
wife — their  natural  distinction  remains — they  only 
temper  now  the  look  of  their  relation,  by  as  much 
as  they  soften  the  authority,  to  love  on  one  side,  and 
deepen  the  obedience,  to  reverence  on  the  other. 

Passing  now  to  Peter  who  had  been  married, 
it  is  pleasant  to  see  what  his  marriage  has  done 
for  him,  in  the  more  appreciative  manner  of  his 
writing.  He  begins  at  the  same  point  with  Paul 
— "  Likewise  ye  wives  be  in  subjection  to  your 
own  husbands ;"  and  the  motive  stated  is  one  that 
encourages  a  confidence  of  power  superior  in 
some  sense  to  the  word  of  the  gospel,  and  even 
to  apostolic  preaching  itself,  viz. :  that  their  hus- 
bands may  "  without  the  word," — without  preach- 
ing, without  exhortation — "  be  won  by  the  con- 
versation [the  beautiful  way]  of  their  wives,"  In 
the  same  strain  he  goes  on  to  speak  of  their  adorn- 
ing— which  is  to  be  no  outward  glare  of  trinkets, 
and  gems,  and  braidings  of  hair,  and  dresses  in 
the  mode,  as  many  think  who  count  women  only 
a  toy — but  it  is  to  be  internal  worth  and  beauty, 
the  hidden  magic  of  a  dear,  celestial  character; 
that  which,  in  God's  scale  of  judgment,  is  of  great 
price.  And  I  know  not  any  thing  ever  said  in 
Scripture  of  mortal  beauty  and  perfection,  which 
carries  an  impression  so  superlative  as  this  word 
TTokvTetes,  all-perfect,  precious,  dear  above  price, 
and  that  "  in  the  sight  of  the  Lord;"  as  if  it  were 
conceived  that  a  woman,  dignified  by  such  inter- 


80  WOMEN'S  SUFFKAGE; 

nal  beauty,  is  really  the  finest  mold  of  created 
being  ever  looked  upon  by  even  God  himself. 

Next,  the  apostle  brings  out  another  specially 
grand  point  in  the  behavior  of  Christian  women, 
as  related  to  the  precedence  and  authority  of  their 
husbands,  setting  Sarah  before  them  as  the  model 
of  all  finest  dignity — "  even  as  Sarah  obeyed 
Abraham,  calling  him  lord ;  whose  daughters  ye 
are  when  ye  do  well  and  are  not  afraid  with 
any  amazement."  And  if  any  thing  will  class  a 
woman  in  her  -subject  state  with  Christ  himself 
in  his,  it  will  be  that  she  is  able  to  carry  herself 
steadily  through  all  the  ungracious  and  violent 
and  often  fierce  exactions  of  her  lot,  with  a  brave 
woman's  heart,  never  cowed  or  driven  out  of  cou- 
rage by  the  tyrant  her  submission  crowns.  A 
delicate,  defenseless,  yet  unf earing  woman  is  a 
brave  light !  Her  type  of  life  is  more  like  that 
of  Christ  than  any  man's  can  be,  and  so  this 
rough-minded,  impetuous,  fisherman  apostle  evi- 
dently feels  himself. 

And,  therefore,  we  are  not  surprised,  when  he 
goes  on  in  the  very  next  verse  to  exhort  the 
"  doing  honor "  to  such  women.  Honor,  as  we 
commonly  speak,  is  a  kind  of  homage,  such  as 
inferiors  pay  to  superiors,  a  subject  nature  to  a 
governing  nature.  Rough  apostle  that  he  is,  he  is 
yet  gallant  enough  to  make  a  beautiful  inversion 
here,  calling  on  the  husbands  to  give  honor  to  the 
wives — the  stronger  vessel  to  the  weaker  and  more 


THE   REFORM   AGAINST   NATURE.  81 

fragile — and  to  take  grade  with  them,  so  far,  in 
the  new  love,  as  to  be  heirs  together  with  them  in 
the  grace  of  life.  He  also  intimates  that  if  they 
can  not  do  this,  but  must  always  be  clamoring  for 
equal  rights  on  one  side,  or  disowning  the  same  on 
the  other,  their  very  "  prayers  will  be  hindered." 
"What  now  is  the  general  result  to  which  we  are 
brought  by  this  review  of  the  Scripture,  but  that 
women  are  out  of  place  in  the  governing  of  men. 
Even  Comte  himself  does  but  echo  the  rejected 
word  when  he  says,  "  Woman  may  persuade,  ad- 
vise, judge,  but  she  should  not  command."  The 
Scriptures  have  more  delicate  arid  genial  ways  of 
speaking  often,  than  in  some  of  the  citations  here 
made,  but  in  whatever  terms  they  speak,  terms  of 
cherishment,  as  for  one's  own  body,  or  of  love  as 
to  a  second  self,  or  of  honor  paid  to  the  precious 
ornament  of  a  beautiful  soul,  or  of  gallant  defer- 
ence and  mindfulness  to  a  person  tenderly  fragile, 
there  is  clearly  never  a  thought  that  women  have 
a  claim,  on  any  score,  to  be  set  forward  as  cam- 
paigners in  the  state  with  men.  The  assertion  of 
their  political  equality  with  men  would  have 
shocked  any  apostle,  or  other  scripture  writer,  and 
an  agitation  by  women,  based  on  such  equality,  to 
secure  the  right  of  open  contest  with  men  for 
political  office  and  power,  would  have  been  looked 
upon  even  as  an  offense  against  nature  itself — an 
outrage  on  decency  and  order  utterly  abominable. 
The  great  question  of  female  suffrage  they  decide 


82  WOMEN'S  SUFFRAGE; 

only  the  more  effectually  without  naming  it,  for 
indeed  it  was  a  thing  unknown,  whether  as  respects 
the  rights  of  men  or  of  women,  and  we  hear  them 
say,  just  what  we  have  been  seeing  with  our  eyes, 
that  men  are  the  force-element  of  the  world,  the 
imperative  sex,  and  women  the  beauty-element, 
called  to  reign  by  the  more  sacred  title  of  obedi- 
ence and  trust ;  both  in  unity,  to  be  one  flesh,  a 
complemented  whole  of  ornament  and  strength. 

About  the  only  aspect  of  equality,  or  likeness  of 
kind  between  the  two  sexes,  anywhere  presented 
in  the  Scriptures,  relates  to  the  future  life,  where, 
we  are  told,  they  "  neither  marry  nor  are  given  in 
marriage,  but  are  as  the  angels  of  God  in  heaven." 
And  the  declaration  appears  to  be  still  more  sig- 
nificant, when  taken  as  connected  with  the  fact 
that  no  scripture  angel  is  put  in  the  feminine 
gender,  and  that  the  word  angel  itself  has  no  fem- 
inine. All  which,  as  some  may  argue,  tokens  the 
fact,  that  sex  belongs  here  below,  and  that  both 
sexes  alike  have  the  real  staple  in  them  of  a  com- 
mon angelhood  in  the  life  to  come — which  staple 
of  course  pertains  to  them  as  truly  here,  and  makes 
them  equal  here  as  there. 

The  argument  will  be  far-fetched  of  course,  but 
arguments  are  wont  .to  be,  when  they  can  not  be 
found  closer  at  hand.  At  the  same  time,  truth 
obliges  me  to  say,  that  I  have  a  certain  pleasure 
in  it,  or  at  least  in  the  facts  at  the  base  of  it,  that 
it  allows  a  view  of  woman  and  her  womanly  rela- 


THE    KEFCBM   AGAINST   NATUKE.  83 

tions  to  man,  that  well  accommodates  our  ad- 
mirations, and  allows  us  to  think  with  great 
satisfaction  of  her  future  possibilities.  As  there 
is  to  be  no  marrying,  or  giving  in  marriage,  so 
there  is  to  be  no  sex,  according  to  our  common, 
more  humano,  sense  of  the  terms.  And  yet,  in 
the  more  spiritual  and  properly  celestial  sense,  the 
two  complementary  natures  are  still  on  hand,  and 
are  wanted  for  the  complete  ordering  and  variety 
of  the  consummate  social  whole.  Husbandhood 
and  wifehood  are  there,  in  the  old-time  bonds  and 
recollections,  by  which  they  wove  their  lives 
together,  in  obligations  which  it  would  be  a  shame 
even  to  goodness  and  purity  ever  to  forget.  They 
are  married  no  more,  and  yet  they  are  married  ; 
even  as  all  friends  are  joined  everlastingly  to 
friends  in  the  offices  of  truth  and  duty,  that  bound 
them  together.  In  this  manner  the  grand  society 
of  angels  comprehends  married  people  and  single 
people,  and  children  grouped  in  part  according  to 
their  life-time  obligations,  offices,  and  affinities. 
True,  there  is  in  one  view,  neither  male  nor  female 
there,  even  as  the  apostle  declares  that,  in  Christ, 
there  is  neither,  and  yet,  the  intolerable  dryness 
there  of  a  pure  male  state,  unblessed  by  womanly 
grace  and  feeling,  is  not  to  be  dreaded.  For  there 
is  a  sexhood  also  in  spirits,  as  truly  as  in  organic 
life,  and  the  sex-quality  is  only  glorified,  not  oblit- 
erated. But  their  scale  of.  quality  is,  it  may  be, 
greatly  changed,  if  not  inverted  in  dignity.  Thus 


84:  WOMEN'S  SUFFRAGE 

the  force-natures — the  male — that  went  forward, 
and  took  the  helm  of  government  and  public  war, 
appear  to  have  graduated  now  as  respects  their 
force-element,  having  no  longer  much  call  for 
either  government  or  war  upon  their  hands.  And 
now  come  up  the  beauty-natures  that  were  sub- 
ject, even  as  Christ  came  up  into  His  divine 
ascendency  when  he  rose  from  the  dead,  reve  -ling 
now  their  quality  and  shining  with  him,  li  in  the 
kingdom  and  patience  "  of  his  suffering  Messiah  - 
ship.  These  women,  that  were  once  put  under 
and  made  subject,  break  into  eminence  now,  as  the 
soprano  natures  once  in  a  while  could  and  did  in 
the  contests  of  art  below,  and  the  superior  fineness 
of  their  mold  puts  them  in  a  tier  of  honor  and 
power,  which  they  have  gloriously  earned  by  their 
subject  state.  They  were  humbled,  and  are  now 
exalted.  Probably  enough  the  man-spirits  have 
more  thunder  in  them  still,  but  thunder  is  no  very 
considerable  power  among  the  unfearing  and  sub- 
limely loving  good  ;  for,  to  all  such,  quality  and 
not  quantity  is  the  glory  that  most  impresses  their 
homage.  And  still,  it  may  be  that,  as  Christ, 
ascending  out  of  weakness  and  the  grave,  felt  "  all 
power"  gathering  in  upon  him,  in  the  spring  of 
his  reactions,  so  these  women  that  were  humbled, 
taking  grade  henceforth  as  angels,  will  the  more  ex- 
cel in  strength,  and  be  chariots  of  God,  more  swift 
on  their  axle,  when  they  go  upon  his  errands. 
And  have  we  not  possibly  here  a  tolerable,  or  at 


THE  REFORM  AGAINST  NATURE.        85 

least,  not  absurd  solution  of  that  rather  fine-drawn 
riddle  by  which  Paul  has  so  long  plagued  the  com- 
mentators : — "  For  this  cause  ought  the  woman  to 
have  power  on  her  head,  because  of  the  angels." 
The  "  power,"  that  is  the  authority  she  is  under, 
signified  by  her  veil,  ought,  he  argues,  to  be  on  her 
head,  as  the  token  of  her  subject  womanhood,  till 
her  graduation  is  accomplished,  and  she  takes  her 
equal  right  among  angels.  She  is  put  in  this  wom- 
anhood, and  the  subject  lot  of  her  sex,  to  produce 
a  duality  and  the  answering  relationships  of  a  two- 
fold quality  or  kind — so  as  to  spell  the  otherwise 
intolerable  monotony  of  an  isolated  and  single  na- 
ture. Double  sentiments  are  thus  to  be  raised,  and 
a  beautiful  dialogue  of  duty  and  feeling,  in  two 
kinds  of  duty,  and  two  kinds  of  feeling,  is  to  keep 
two  echoes  in  play,  and  by  so  much  of  part  and 
counterpart,  maintain  the  dear  society  of  life.  This 
double  appointment,  therefore — more  honorable 
in  fact  for  the  woman,  though  it  does  not  so  ap- 
pear— she  must  never  rebel  against,  but  must  wear 
upon  her  head  the  veil  that  signifies  her  office, 
till  her  finer  nature  comes  to  the  flower.  She 
will  do  it  because  of  the  angels  and  her  own  half- 
Christly  graduation  among  them. 

Be  it  then  allowed,  that  such  kind  of  sentiments 
as  I  am  here  discovering,  are  only  put  upon  the 
Scripture,  and  not  found  in  it,  they  are  none  the 
less  worthy,  and  it  may  be,  none  the  less  true.  I 
believe  that  they  are  from  the  Scripture,  and  re- 


86 

veal,  as  in  beautiful  forecast,  the  sublime  culmina- 
tion of  what  is  called  so  often  the  dejected  lot  of 
woman.  A  great  many  things,  because  of  the 
trial  that  is  in  them,  are  not  dejected,  but  are  only 
the  more  honorable  and  supremely  elect.  4  "Who  in 
fact  are  the  true  privileged  of  mankind  but  the" 
heroes;  and  who  are  the  heroes  but  those  who 
master  great  adversities,  those  who  have  been,  able 
to  suffer,  and  are  therefore  fit  to  reign  ?jf  In  this 
view  it  is,  that  I  can  only  look  with  supreme  pity 
on  the  campaigning  women  of  this  day,  who  have 
so  far  mistaken  the  honors  of  their  sex,  as  to  see 
no  privilege  but  in  being  clear  of  it.  They  ought 
to  see  beforehand  that  they  can  not  be  men  ;  and  (Tfr  r 
since  they  must  be  women,  why  should  they  be 
teaching  both  themselves  and  their  sex  to  have  a 
more  fixed  distaste  of  just  what  they  must  in  any 
case  be  ?  They  appear  to  be  overmuch  impressed 
with  the  clatter  and  clangor  of  our  political  ma- 
chinery ;  there  are  so  many  rights  in  question,  and 
such  worlds  of  flash  argument  to  assert  them  and 
defend  them,  and  getting  office  signifies  so  much, 
and  their  over-easy  admirations  and  ambitions 
are  set  in  a  glow,  and  their  selfish  appetite  kin- 
dled puts  them  on  asking  :  Why  should  not  we  go 
in  for  a  part  of  the  game  also  ?  Are  we  not  dying 
for  the  want  of  something  to  do,  and  what  better 
thing  is  there  for  us  to  do  ?  Have  we  not  as  good 
rights  as  men  ?  Have  we  not  the  same  ?  Are  we 
not  men  ourselves  ? 


THE    REFORM    AGAINST   NATURE.  87 

Of  course  they  are,  in  some  true  sense  of  the 
terms,  but  I  wish  it  could  be  seen  that  they  think 
as  much  and  have  as  high  an  opinion  of  being 
women.  For  one,  I  have  a  considerable  satisfac- 
tion in  having  women  ;  just  such,  I  mean,  as  can  be 
and  love  to  be  women.  I  want  them  exactly  not 
to  govern,  not  to  vote,  not  to  be  the  stumping 
power  of  assemblies;  natures  that  go  to  make 
atmosphere,  and  not  to  burn  it  up;  who  can  bei 
apart,  who  can  wait  in  silence,  who  can  think  it  a! 
privilege  not  to  be  required  in  the  times  of  confla- 
gration, and  assume  it  as  their  finer  and  more^gentle 
lot  to  be  in  the  sweetness  of  God,  and  keep  some 
flavor  of  it  for  the  flavorless  and  hard- worn  life 
of  their  husbands.  They  are  also  to  be  greatly, 
desired,  that  they  may  put  something  into  their 
husbands,  if  possible,  that  is  fit  to  be  enjoyed,  and 
worthy  of  being  respected  and  honored.  And  if 
they  do.  not  make  history  fast  in  this  manner,  God 
be  thanked,  if  some  are  willing  to  live  without 
making  history.  Give  us  women  enough  to  do 
the  disinterested  part  of  the  world's  life,  and  think 
it  all  the  more  honorable  that  they  do  not  want  to 
be  honored,  and  then  we  are  so  far  sure  that  there 
is  something  great  in  the  world.  And  if  this  be 
the  calling  of  women,  when  they  are  shut  away 
from  place  and  power,  is  there  any  calling 'which 
they  can  not  better  afford  to  lose  ? 


88 


Y. 

SUBTLE  MISTAKES  OF  FEELING  AND  ARGUMENT. 

THE  false  motives  and  mistaken  arguments,  that 
make  their  appearance  in  discussions  of  this  sub- 
ject, are  too  many  to  be  recounted.  To  handle 
the  whole  chapter  of  them  specifically  and  exhaust- 
ively is  impossible,  but  it  may  be  important  to 
single  out,  for  exposition,  a  few  that  operate  most 
broadly  and  carry  most  effect. 

It  is  very  desirable  that  our  women  agitators  in 
this  field  should  understand  the  real  motive  by 
which  they  are  instigated,  and  there  is  much  reason 
to  believe  that  they  sometimes  do  not.  There  is 
a  terrible  ennui  upon  them  ;  a  want  of  motive,  op- 
portunity, possibility,  which  would  even  make  it 
pardonable  to  break  out  in  almost  any  sort  of  re- 
volt, or  wildest  sally.  They  fall  on  the  question 
of  suffrage  and  political  life,  and  get  so  much  ta- 
ken with  the  notion  of  equality  propounded  that, 
before  they  know  it,'  they  begin  to  see  all  the  king- 
doms of  the  world,  and  imagine  themselves  really 
conquering  place  and  signification  in  the  promised 
equality.  It  is  impossible  not  to  speak  of  them 
here  with  sympathy  and  true  respect ;  all  the 


THE   KEFOEM  AGAINST  NATURE.  89 

greater  respect,  we  might  say,  that  they  can  dare 
something  excessive.  However  heated  they  may 
be  in  their  expectations,  they  are  not  off  the  basis 
of  reason  so  far  as  to  wholly  misconceive  the  re- 
form that  engages  them.  The  re-sexing  of  their 
sex,  even  so  far  as  to  make  it  manly  in  habit  and 
action,  they  know  to  be  impossible.  They  might 
very  well  know  beside,  that  they  will  burden 
their  condition  with  worse  disadvantages,  and 
heavier  weights  of  depression,  if  they  undertake 
any  thing  which  supposes  a  feeling  of  disrespect  to 
their  sex.  Probably  enough  they  do  not,  but  it  is 
not  difficult  to  see,  that  they  are  working  in  a  kind 
of  impatience  that  idealizes  relief,  in  the  subtle, 
undefined,  indefinable,  hope  of  some  masterhood 
state  which  is  somehow  to  be  gained,  in  the  suf- 
frage, and  to  be  a  virtual  equivalent  of  masculinity. 
Political  power  and  place,  it  is  believed,  will  mend 
their  condition.  They  will  conquer,  in  this  man- 
ner, a  new  sphere  and  platform  of  life,  where  they 
will  at  least  be  in  peerhood  with  men,  and  the  dis- 
honored, sadly  depressed  lot  of  their  sex  will  be 
taken  away.  I  believe  no  such  thing.  On  the 
contrary,  I  am  under  a  conviction,  not  to  be  re- 
sisted that  the  depression  they  are  under  will  be 
greatly  increased.  Giving  the  ballot,  we  shall 
give  stones  for  bread ;  putting  them,  as  women,  to 
a  test  they  can  not  stand,  and  forcing  them  down 
thus  into  a  more  hopeless  prostration  than  could 
otherwise  ever  be  reached. 


90  WOMEN'S  SUFFRAGE; 

To  say  again,  that  I  most  profoundly  sympa- 
thize with  their  endeavor,  however  mistaken,  is 
unnecessary. 

If  I  were  a  woman,  in  the  present  lot  of  wom- 
en, I  think  I  should  certainly  wish  to  be  a  man, 
and  that  any  change,  giving  but  a  semblance 
of  a  chance  that  way,  I  should  hail  with  delight 
and  accept  with  eagerness.  The  wages  allowed 
their  industry  are  so  unequal ;  their  employ- 
ments so  restricted ;  their  subjection,  so  often, 
when  married,  to  an  overbearing  tyrant  will  they 
have  no  counter  force  to  resist ;  the  crime  it  is  for 
them  to  be  heart-broken,  and  publish  their  woes  by 
the  sad  look  of  their  silence ;  and,  what  is  worst 
and  saddest  of  all,  the  worse  than  broker's  'cor- 
ner, wherein  all  unmarried  women  are  penned  by 
restrictions  they  can  not  escape — unable  to  work, 
because  it  will  'humble  their  position ;  unable  to 
venture  on  great  operations  in  trade,  because  a 
.woman  can  not  get  the  necessary  credit ;  subject 
to  indignities  and  much  laughter,  when  they  un- 
dertake a  profession ;  wanting  marriage  as  the 
proper  woman's  place,  with  a  conscious  ability  to 
fill  it,  and  with  no  ambition,  save  to  be  the  orna- 
ment and  cherished  love  of  a  worthy  and  true 
husband,  yet  chained  fast  under  bonds  of  deli- 
cacy which  well  nigh  forbid  so  much  as  the  being 
approachable  by  a  man.  When,  I  say,  these  things 
are  duly  considered  as  pertainings  of  a  woman's 
lot,  we  might  alrncst  justify  them  in  a  riot  against 


THE   REFORM   AGAINST   NATURE.  91 

natural  sexhood  itself,  if  there  were  any  thing  to 
be  gained  by  it. 

And  yet  there  is  one  matter,  just  now  referred 
to,  where  a  genuine  reform  would  accomplish  more 
for  women,  as  I  verily  believe,  and  take  them 
out  of  the  corner  that  now  pinches  them  a  great 
deal  more  certainly,  than  to  give  them  a  right  of 
suffrage  and  of  civil  office ;  having  also  the  far- 
ther advantage,  that  it  would  give  them  a  more 
open  way  to  the  proper  woman's  life,  for  which 
they  are  made,  instead  of  taking  them  off  into  quasi 
battles  with  men,  for  points  of  precedence  and 
prerogatives  of  government  which  do  not  belong 
to  them  and  never  can ;  I  speak  here  of  a  reform 
that  takes  off,  or  somehow  loosens  the  embargo 
on  women,  as  respects  advances  toward  marriage. 
The  assumption  now  is,  that  women  must  be  first 
lassoed  and  taken,  courted  long  and  skillfully  then 
and  almost  to  the  death,  before  they  can  venture 
an  approving  look.  If  they  can  not  be  conquered, 
then  they  must  not  be  had,  and  they  must  take 
this  ground  themselves.  On  one  side  there  must 
be  a  close  fence  of  prudery,  hard  as  possible  to  be 
got  over ;  and  on  the  other,  the  man  who  will  try, 
must  go  to  it  bravely,  which  alas  !  for  his  modesty 
is  likely  to  be  quite  impossible.  Full  three-quar-  \ 
ters  of  the  men  who  get  stuck  in  their  bachelor 
life  and  are  never  married,  are  in  fact  the  most 
in-born  adorers  of  women  ;  such  as  never  in  their 
lives  can  muster  courage  for  any  advance,  just  be- 


92  WOMEN'S  SUFFKAGE  ; 

cause  the  shrine  they  look  upon  has  too  much  di- 
vinity in  it  for  their  mortal  approach.  Of  course 
it  will  not  do  for  unmarried  women  to  put  them- 
selves in  a  way  of  being  suitors  to  men.  That 
kind  of  suitorship  would  even  be  an  offense,  and 
raise  a  sense  of  revulsion  ;  nobody  would  recom- 
mend to  women  that  they  get  over  their  modesty  ; 
but  the  almost  cholic  stringency  of  what  are 
called  good  manners,  in  this  matter,  might  be  re- 
laxed, without  real  impropriety  and  with  great 
advantage.  The  present  iron-clad  modesty,  which 
is  simply  ridiculous  in  either  party,  might  be  so 
far  mitigated  as  to  let  feeling  feel  its  way,  and 
carry  on  its  own  courtship  ;  requiring  no  restric- 
tion save  the  restriction  of  words  and  formal  ad- 
vances, and  allowing  nature  to  interpret  and 
work  out  her  problem,  hampered  by  no  unnatural 
coyishness.  Women  can  not  be  forward  and  bold, 
but  they  are  now  a  great  way  further  off  than 
they  need  be. 

There  is  also  another  way  in  which  they  are 
continually  reducing  their  chances  of  marriage, 
that  is  far  more  blamable,  and  which  certainly 
can  be  rectified ;  I  refer  to  the  foolish  ambition 
they  so  often  indulge  and  openly  manifest,  of  be- 
ing married  into  condition.  There  is  here  and 
there  a  noble-hearted  young  wom.an,  such  as  could 
be  willing  to  be  joined  with  the  small,  close  for- 
tunes of  a  worthy,  toiling  man,  and  who  would 
even  prefer  to  struggle  with  him,  and  have  a  com- 


THE  KEFOKM  AGAINST  NATURE.        93 

mon  title  with  him  in  his  successes.  Bat  our  young 
men  are  getting  the  impression  now,  and  a  good 
right  to  it  is  given  them,  that  they  can  not  marry 
till  they  have  good  condition  to  offer ;  what  can 
they  do  with  a  wife  till  they  have  enough  laid 
up  for  a  wife  to  spend  ?  And  what  is  to  be  made 
of  a  woman,  when  she  has  no  palace,  and  no 
coach,  and  what  has  she  to  look  for  but  a  very 
dull  time,  if  she  can  not  glitter.  This  very  foolish 
ambition  is  due,  no  doubt,  in  a  considerable  de- 
gree, to  the  fault  of  the  young  men  themselves,  and 
the  very  meager  and  mean  impression  they  have  of 
women — their  low,  merely  shop-keeper's  culture, 
that  allows  them  never  to  conceive,  either  a  fine 
woman,  or  a  true  home ;  and  yet  it  is  largely  the 
fault  of  the  other  sex,  who  suffer  most  by  it.  They 
themselves  give  it  to  be  understood,  that  figure 
is  what  they  expect  and  live  for,  and  the  hint 
that  is  so  often  given  will  about  as  certainly  be 
taken.  Hence  again,  the  great  diminution  of  mar- 
riages, and  still  more,  of  happy  marriages.  And 
the  result  is,  that  we  have  on  hand  a  vast  over- 
stock of  single  women,  dying,  as  it  were,  of  ennui, 
suffocated  in  the  feeling  that  they  exist  for  nothing, 
and  have  really  no  place ;  till  finally,  they  break 
out  in  their  impatience,  and  resolve,  at  any  rate, 
to  have  a  place  with  men,  as  men  have  with  each 
other.  They  are  going  to  vote,  they  are  going 
to  have  office ;  they  discover,  in  fact,  a  kind  of 
woman's  millennium,  in  the  right  of  woman's 


94:  WOMEN'S  SUFFRAGE  ; 

suffrage.  Their  mistake  is  total.  It  is  not  their 
present  misery  that  they  can  not  be  men,  but  that 
they  can  not  be  women.  And  this  latter  they  can 
be,  while  the  former  they  can  not.  It  does  not  ap- 
pear to  be  seen,  as  yet,  that  government  and  au- 
thority are  not  for  them,  but  a  beginning  of  suc- 
cess will  very  soon  bring  it  to  light.  There  is  not  one 
of  them  all,  who  can  settle  herself  to  the  pose  of 
a  judge  on  the  bench,  without  being  laughed  at. 
Or,  if  they  should  get  a  representation  in  Congress, 
which  appears  to  be  the  ambition  of  some,  there 
is  not  cast-iron  or  coarse  pig-metal  enough  in 
their  make,  to  bear  that  kind  of  campaigning  for 
any  length  of  time.  By  and  by,  or  within  a  ten 
years'  time,  the  beautiful  restraints  of  gallantry 
will  be  worn  out,  and  the  man-force  will  reduce 
the  forlorn  sisterhood  to  such  ignominy  and  deri- 
sion, as  will  finally  discourage  that  kind  of  repre- 
sentation. If  the  House  could  scarcely  abide 
John  Randolph's  treble,  this  chorus  of  treble,  flu- 
ting half  the  time,  will  grow  wearisome,  and  then 
annoying,  and  finally  cease. 

No ;  if  any  hopeful  and  true  reform  is  possible  in 
this  matter,  it  must  be  the  reform  that  takes  off 
the  restrictions  on  marriage,  and  facilitates  the 
passing  on  of  women  to  the  true  places  and  hon- 
ors of  their  womanhood.  And  if  men  will  not  co- 
operate, and  even  be  forward  in  that  kind  of  re- 
form— as  it  might  infer  some  fault  of  delicacy  in 
women  to  be — they  must  consent  to  be  so  far 


THE   REFOBM   AGAINST   NATUKE.  95 

chargeable  with  real  inhumanity.  Can  the  Chris- 
tian pulpit  itself  be  true  to  its  office,  without  ap- 
plying itself,  as  things  are  now  going,  to  the  cor- 
rection of  our  false  views  of  marriage,  and  the 
consequently  diminishing  frequency  of  marriages? 
If  there  is  a  postponing  on  one  side,  instigated  by 
a  pompous  and  hollow  ambition,  utterly  wide  of 
the  beautiful  meaning  of  the  family  state ;  if  on 
the  other,  where  the  poison  of  the  same  ambition 
also  works,  there  is  a  consequent  loss  of  hope  and 
a  turning  away  to  go  into  fight  with  men  in  the 
rougher  terms  of  equality,  is  it  not  time  for  the 
teachers  of  religion,  the  true  guardians  of  society, 
to  ask  what  duties  may  be  now  incumbent  on 
them  ?  And  is  there  not,  besides,  a  possibility  of 
accomplishing  something  in  this  matter  by  organi- 
zation ;  and  so  of  doing  more,  a  hundredfold,  to 
relieve  the  oppressive  over-stock,  under  which  so 
many  fine  women  are  stifled,  than  will  ever  be 
done,  by  all  the  office  rights  and  voting  privileges 
they  are  now  so  eager  to  obtain.  Such  an  organi- 
zation, working  only  for  names  that  are  given,  or 
by  friends  suggested,  and  presuming  only,  under 
strictest  bonds  of  secrecy,  to  suggest,  commend, 
and  prepare  acquaintance  in  ways  of  proper 
delicacy,  might  bridge  a  great  many  gulfs  of 
false  modesty  perhaps  that  will  otherwise  be  for- 
ever impassable. 

In  this  kind  of  reform  there  is  nothing  unhope- 
ful, or  impossible ;   for  it  is  according  to  nature, 


96 

and  not  a  reform  against  nature.  The  poor  Bud- 
dhist women  of  China,  for  example,  have  abundant 
reason,  out  of  their  religion  itself,  to  undertake  the 
chance  of  being  men,  forlorn,  to  all  appearance, 
as  that  chance  may  be.  They  were  dogs,  or  cats, 
or  rabbits,  in  the  previous  state,  before  they  came 
hither  ;  and  the  priests  now  ply  them  with  a  fierce, 
almost  skinning  taxation,  that  they  may  get  help 
in  securing  another  good  transmigration  in  the 
next  stage  of  life  before  them.  This  present  state 
they  call  "  the  bitterness,"  and  with  very  good 
reason ;  but  they  hope  and  pray,  and  even  ache 
with  expectation,  that  Buddha  will  give  them  what 
they  call  "the  position  of  a  man  in  good  circum- 
stances "  in  the  future  life.  And  if  our  Christian 
view  of  angels  always  in  the  masculine  is  correct, 
they  might  possibly  get  some  tolerably  near  ap- 
proach to  it.  But  whatever  woman  goes  after 
"  the  position  of  a  man  in  good  circumstances  " 
here,  is  far  less  likely  to  succeed,  to  say  the  least, 
than  she  would  be,  if  she  was  looking  after  "  the 
position  of  a  woman  in  good  circumstances."  This 
last  she  may  get,  but  the  other  she  most  assuredly 
never  will. 

Now  it  is  the  very  great  misfortune — no,  it  is 
the  glory  of  woman,  that  her  position,  not  being 
either  weak  or  low,  requires  so  great  moral 
refinement,  a  delicacy  of  perception  so  nearly  ce- 
lestial, to  see  what  is  really  in  it.  The  glory  of  it, 
for  it  is  deep  in  glory,  is  that  it  is  so  unselfish. 


THE  REFORM   AGAINST  NATURE.  97 

You  see  this  where  it  works  instinctively,  as  when 
some  really  talented  woman  dresses  up  some  idol 
of  a  husband,  little  thought  of  by  any  but  herself, 
in  the  disproportionate  honors  and  admirations  of 
her  womanly  devotion  ;  or  when  such  a  woman  as 
the  world-renowned  Madame  de  Stael  pictures  her 
dull-witted,  rather  common-place  father,  the  min- 
ister Neckar,  as  the  great  financiering  genius  and 
first  statesman  of  his  time  ;  or  when  Aaron  Burr's 
truly  gifted  Theodosia  writes,  in  the  almost  ab- 
surd homage  of  her  daughterhood — "  You  appear 
to  me  so  elevated  above  all  other  men ;  I  con- 
template you  with  such  a  strange  mixture  of  hu- 
mility, admiration,  reverence,  love,  and  pride,  that 
very  little  superstition  would  be  necessary  to  make 
me  worship  you  as  a  superior  being,  such  enthu- 
siasm does  your  character  excite  in  me."  These 
womanly  homages  so  instinctively  paid  are  easily 
and  often  derided  as  a  weakness  of  the  sex,  and 
yet  so  much  of  worship  indicates  the  greatness 
and  sublimity  of  a  worshiping  nature.  This 
feminine  trust,  that  submerges  so  much  of  criti- 
cism, is  so  truly  unselfish  and  so  far  away  from 
pride,  that  we  only  the  more  admire  its  admira- 
tions. At  the  same  time,  there  is,  it  must  be  al- 
lowed, a  boldness  and  imposing  prominence  in  the 
coarse,  heroic  airs  of  manly  position — a  noise 
and  eclat,  a  bursting  into  admiration  by  force 
—  which  even  a  romping  girl  can  see  and  be 
greatly  taken  by,  or  a  selfish,  plodding  woman  can 
5 


08  WOMEN'S  SUFFRAGE; 

easily  set  herself  on  scheming  to  obtain.  Even 
as  the  wild,  free  Charlotte  Elizabeth,  in  the  boy- 
like  rampages  allowed  her  young  nobility,  was 
caught  with  desire  to  be  a  real  boy,  and  being  told 
that  Mary  Germain  had  transformed  her  sex,  by 
jumping  fairly  out  of  it,  says  :  "  I  made  such  ter- 
rific leaps  that  it  was  a  miracle  I  did  not  break 
my  neck."  A  more  selfish,  terribly  corroding  vice 
gets  hold,  not  seldom,  of  the  managing  woman, 
which  it  is  more  sad  to  think  of;  as  when  it  is  de- 
clared of  Madame  de  Montcalm,  now  sick,  by  her 
friend,  the  Duchess  de  Duras  : — "  She  is  eaten  up 
by  politics ;  they  are  her  vulture."  Judging  from 
present  appearances,  this  particular  brood  of  vul- 
tures is  getting  to  be  largely  increased. 

Alas !  that  so  many  women,  some  of  them  really 
gifted  women,  should  so  little  perceive  where  the 
honors  of  true  womanhood  lie ;  and  that  appar- 
ently, because  it  requires  a  finer  degree  of  insight 
and  moral  sensibility  than  they  have  been  able  as 
yet  to  supply.  They  are  down  too  nearly  upon 
the  selfish,  prose  level  of  masculine  contrivings, 
rivalries,  and  struggles  after  power,  and  the  poet- 
ries of  their  beautiful  nature  are  too  subtle  and 
deep  for  their  discovery.  They  do  not  conceive 
at  all  what  it  means  to  be  the  sex  elected  to  gentle- 
ness and  patience,  or,  it  may  be,  to  the  dreadful 
lot  of  violence  and  tyrant  cruelty  endured ;  a  dis- 
interested nature,  held  in  suppression  by  a  hard, 
dry,  forward,  selfish  nature,  claiming  it  for  husband 


THE   KEFORM    AGAINST   NATURE.  99 

by  the  homages  she  pays  it,  and  hiding  her  really 
supreme  glory  under  its  coarse,  forbidding  mascu- 
linities. Oh !  if  there  were  nothing  in  this  world 
but  these  workers  in  will  and  war  and  wrong, 
called  men,  it  would  be  a  most  unblest  and  wretch- 
edly dry  concern.  Nothing  can  ever  lift  the  pic- 
ture till  a  subject  nature  appears,  milder,  truer,  and 
closer  to  the  type  of  God's  own  dear  submissions 
in  the  cross  of  his  Son  ;  allowing  us  to  bless  our 
sight  in  the  beholding  of  so  many  women,  by 
graces  and  benignities  of  self-forgetting  love  and 
sacrifice.  And  if  still  these  better  and  elect  na- 
tures want  to  be  men,  counting  that  an  advance 
of  condition  much  to  be  desired,  God  forgive  us, 
if  we  quite  as  much  want  them  to  be  women. 

So  much  as  regards  the  man  ward  aspirations 
implied  in  the  woman's  suffrage  reform.  I  pro- 
ceed, in  the  next  place,  to  speak  of  the  very  large 
class  of  inversions  that  overset  the  order  of  time 
and  cause,  and  breed,  of  course,  a  correspondent 
number  of  sophisms.  Thus  it  is  argued,  how  often, 
that  equality  between  man  and  woman  is  the 
necessary  condition  of  affection  between  them ; 
whereas  it  is  affection  rather  that  begets  the  only 
sense  of  equality.  First,  we  have  the  affection 
based  in  qualities  of  unlikeness,  that  may  even  be 
called  inequality,  and  which  gives  priority,  man- 
aging right,  and  authority  to  the  man ;  homages 
and  trusts  of  protectorship,  and  upward-looking 


100 

admirations,  and  a  "  seeking  unto  "  for  guardian 
force  and  "  rule  "  on  the  part  of  the  woman.  Then 
comes  equality,  because  the  affection  is  so  dear 
and  complete,  and  so  beautifully  colored  by  the 
varieties  of  their  two  answering  poles  of  character 
— just  as  the  two  poles  of  the  globe  compose  a 
perfect  unity  because  of  their  complementary  op- 
positions and  repugnancies.  Were  the  two  parties 
equal  in  the  sense  of  being  alike,  even  as  two 
women  or  two  men  are  equal,  they  would  only  be 
yarn,  and  not  cloth,  threads  drawn  parallel,  but 
woven  by  no  cross  relations ;  but  when  the  parties, 
a  man  and  a  woman,  so  unlike,  are  ingrafted  mu- 
tually by  their  bisexual  qualities,  they  are  so  com- 
pletely one,  that  authority  is  silent,  and  difference 
almost  vanishes,  and  it  scarcely  occurs  to  them  to 
ask  whether  they  are  equal  or  not,  because  they 
are  no  longer  two.  And  yet  this  milling  of  reform 
for  women's  suffrage  goes  on  the  plan  of  making 
two  of  the  pair — either  two  men  or  two  women,  no 
matter  which — and  expecting,  in  that  way  of  strict 
equality,  to  beget  a  more  certain,  better  state  of 
affection. 

There  is  another  inversion  of  true  argument  in 
this  question,  whieh  is  thrust  upon  our  notice 
almost  every  day,  viz.,  that  we  must  have  wom- 
en at  the  polls,  to  civilize  the  polls,  and  be  a 
law  of  grace  and  refinement  in  all  public  affairs. 
"  Since  the  world  began,"  says  Mr.  Beecher,  "  to 
refine  society  has  been  woman's  function.  She  is 


THE  REFORM  AGAINST  NATURE.       101 

God's  vicegerent  on  earth,  for  that  end.  You 
may  be  sure  that  she  that  has  carried  refinement  to 
the  household,  to  the  church,  to  social  life,  to  litera- 
ture, to  art,  to  every  interest  except  government, 
will  also  carry  it  to  legislation,  and  the  whole  of 
civil  and  public  procedure,  if  it  is  to  be  carried 
there  at  all."  Mr.  Beecher  could  easily  see  farther 
if  he  would.  Suppose  it  should  happen  to  be  true, 
that  she  has  carried  her  beautiful  grace  into  so 
many  spheres  of  life  and  society,  just  because  of 
the  one  exception  made;  viz.,  that  she  has  kept 
herself  aloof  from  the  stormy  life  of  intrigue,  and 
party  passion,  and  official  command.  Suppose 
that,  being  qualified  by  nature  to  be  subject,  and 
not  to  govern,  she  would  even  spoil  the  delicacy  of 
her  subject  nature  and  become  as  unrefining 
everywhere  as  if  she  were  a  man.  Woman  is  going 
to  be  acted  on  as  well  as  to  act,  if  she  goes  into 
political  life ;  and  for  one,  I  have  not  much  faith 
in  what  she  can  do  by  her  nature  when  she  abuses 
it.  If  the  log  may  be  split  by  the  wooden  wedge, 
most  of  us  would  like  to  be  sure  that  the  wedge  is 
not  going  to  be  split  by  the  log.  Where  away 
goes  the  refinement  of  the  polls,  when  the  polls 
have  unrefined  the  refiner  ? 

We  encounter  another  inversion  of  order  and 
consequent  mistake  of  argument,  in  the  assump- 
tion, that  force  or  muscular  superiority  was  the 
fundamental  cause,  at  which  all  masculine  prece- 
dence and  rule  began.  And  it  is  even  assumed  by 


102  WOMEN'S  SUFFRAGE  ; 

Mrs.  J.  Stuart  Mill,  in  the  Edinburgh  Review  of 
A.  D.  1851,  that  a  whole  half  of  the  human  race,  viz., 
the  female  half,  are  even  now  "  passing  through  life 
in  a  state  of  forced  subordination  to  the  other  half." 
And  accordingly,  it  is  the  boast  of  the  new  wom- 
en's suffrage  reform,  that  this  old  reign  of  mus- 
cle,  or  masculine  force,  is  going  at  last  to  be 
removed,  and  make  room  for  the  true  equality 
of  the  sexes,  and  the  finally  complete  ascendency 
of  justice.     A  greater  misconception  will  not  eas- 
ily be   invented.      The  subordinate  condition  of 
women  is  not  now  a  "  forced  subordination,"  and 
never  has  been  to  any  very  great  extent,  since  the 
world  began.     The  subordination  is  a  fact  univer- 
sal, and  never  will  be  any  less  so,  as  long  as  the 
world   continues.     But  it  is   a  fact,   maintained 
more  by  the  natural  expression  of  a  forceful  nature, 
than  by  any  compelling  uses  of  force.     It  is  the 
heavy  tread,  and  the  hard-knit  frame,  and  the  thun- 
dering guttural  voice,  and  the  Jupiter-like  air  and 
expression — these  it  is,  and  man  is  not  to  blame 
for  these — that  pass  the  law  and  cast  the  lot  of 
female     subordination.       Sometimes,     especially 
among  the  savage  races,  it  is  maintained,  we  know, 
by  will,  and  the  cruel  exactions  of  force,  but  it  is 
j  ust  as  truly  a  fact  where  it  is  never  compelled  by 
any  such  severities.     The  man-type  subordinates 
the  woman-type  in  all  best  terms  of  society  and 
purest  terms  of  morality,  and  will  do  so  as  long  as 
men  are  men  and  women  are  women.     The  sub- 


THE   REFORM   AGAINST   NATURE.  103 

ordination  is  moral  simply,  based,  that  is,  in  moral 
expression,  and  no  conditions  of  suffrage  or  equal 
count  in  the  ballot,  kept  up  for  a  dozen  inillen- 
iums  will  take  it  away.  It  is  doubtless  true,  as  we 
so  often  hear,  that  women  rule  the  world — they 
rule  it,  that  is  because  they  are  subordinate  ;  which 
is  the  most  beautiful  and  truest  rule  conceivable ; 
but  that  they  are  ever  going  to  rule  it  as  in  chief, 
or  by  any  political  supremacy,  is  neither  to  be 
apprehended  nor  believed.  Why,  if  twenty  women 
to  one  man  should  be  the  relative  scale  of  births 
from  this  time  forth,  the  men  would  rule  the 
world  as  completely  still  as  ever.  And  they 
would  do  it  too,  by  no  exercise  of  force,  but  only 
by  the  look  of  it. 

There  is  yet  another  kind  of  argument,  which, 
instead  of  getting  the  future  out  of  the  present,  gets 
the  present  out  of  the  future.  We  anticipate  some- 
times a  progress  in  the  moral  state,  that  will  quite 
supersede  the  political,  and  make  it  possible  to 
live,  without  either  laws  or  tribunals.  Having 
this  ideal  in  prospect,  the  conclusion  is  sprung 
forthwith,  that,  as  everybody  will  be  doing  right 
spontaneously,  under  the  intrinsic  sway  of  moral- 
ity, there  will  of  course,  be  no  place  left  for 
"  authority  "  in  men  as  related  to  women.  But 
suppose  this  fine  ideal  state  is  not  yet  reached,  and 
will  not  be  for  some  thousands  of  years,  what  mean- 
time is  going  to  settle  the  family  council  as  to  re- 
tis  ence,  means  of  living,  ways  of  living,  and  he 


104:  WOMEN'S  SUFFRAGE  ; 

like,  when  the  man  and  the  woman  can  not  agree  ? 
The  case  must  be  decided  somehow,  and  who  shall 
do  it  ?  Is  it  the  man's  right,  or  is  it  the  woman's  ? 
And  if  the  man  decides,  taking  that  for  his  right, 
and  even  his  duty,  how  does  that  decision  operate  ? 
Is  it  a  matter  of  force  —  stronger  force  subduing 
weaker — or  is  it  simply  to  be  a  matter  of  right  and 
moral  conviction  ?  I  observe  in  all  these  discus- 
sions of  woman's  suffrage,  how  very  nearly  wo 
Americans  have  lost  the  idea  of  authority.  We 
take  it  as  a  kind  of  dictation-force,  which  is 
only  repulsive.  It  is  command  enforced  by  sanc- 
tions. And  that,  of  course,  when  taken  as  the 
authority  of  man,  is  simply  odious  ;  whereas  all 
true  authority  operates  in  and  through  moral  con- 
victions only.  "  This  man  speaks  with  authori- 
ty," said  the  people,  "  not  as  the  scribes."  They 
did  not  mean  that  Christ  was  uttering  law  and 
maintaining  it  by  force,  but  they  meant  that  his 
sentiments  and  his  personal  air  affirmed  them- 
selves, and  carried  conviction  by  their  own  pure 
emphasis.  This  was  his  authority.  There  was,  it 
is  true,  a  kind  of  authority  in  him  that  went  with 
force,  as  when  he  drove  the  profane  hucksters  out 
of  the  temple ;  and  yet  the  remarkable  thing  even 
there  was,  that  he  carried  nothing  by  the  applica- 
tion of  his  rods,  but  every  thing  by  the  sacredly 
impressive  heat  of  his  indignations.  In  short,  no 
conception  is  really  more  unworthy  and  low  than 
that  which  resolves  authority  into  force,  and  even 


THE  REFORM  AGAINST  NATURE.       105 

imagines  that  the  moral  progress  of  society — 
which  is,  in  fact,  to  culminate  in  the  completely 
sovereign  authority  of  moral  ideas — will  therefore 
take  it  quite  away. 

We  pass  now  to  another  class  of  mistaken  argu- 
ments and  false  assumptions,  that  grow  out  of  some 
comparative  estimate  of  the  sexes,  which  is  too 
hasty  and  crude  to  support  any  rational  conclu- 
sion. Thus  it  is  maintained  that  woman  is  not  in 
any  sense  more  complementary  to  man  than  man 
to  woman.  And  it  is  doubtless  true,  that  woman 
is  to  be  more  complete  in  womanhood  because  of 
man,  even  as  man  is  to  be  more  complete  in  man- 
hood because  of  woman.  But  it  does  not  follow 
that  she  represents  humanity  in  the  same  way,  and 
has  an  equal  right  to  do  it  by  the  same  things. 
That  has  never  been  the  sense  of  the  world.  In 
all  known  languages,  we  call  the  human  race  man, 
and  never  call  it  woman.  And  when  we  speak 
in  this  manner,  we  do  it  in  the  feeling  that  every 
particular  man  and  woman  has  a  complementary 
office  to  fill  under  the  generic  word  man,  which 
complementary  office  every  particular  man  fills 
in  a  sense  more  primary  and  capital,  and  every 
woman  in  a  sense  more  secondary  and  subordinate. 
Paul  words  the  relation  just  as  we  do,  and  just  as 
we  see  it  with  our  eyes — -u  neither  was  the  man  cre- 
ated for  the  woman,  but  the  woman  for  the  man." 

Again,  it  is  affirmed,  with  perfect  truth,  that 


106 

woman  has  just  as  good  right  as  man  to  assert  and 
improve  her  own  individuality;  whereupon  the 
sophistry  comes  in  by  an  inference,  that  she  has 
just  as  good  right  as  he  to  vote,  and  have  office, 
and  be  a  campaigner  with  men  in  their  political 
strifes  and  ambitions.  Suppose  it  should  happen 
to  be  true,  that  going  into  that  particular  field  is 
against  all  perfection  of  her  individuality,  that  her 
womanly  qualities  are  too  delicately  fine,  too  close 
to  the  pure  intuitions  of  morality,  to  suffer  any 
thing  but  damage  in  such  rough  ways  of  encoun- 
ter ;  what  in  that  case  becomes  of  the  argument  ? 
Instead  of  showing  that  she  has  just  as  good  right 
as  men  to  be  banged,  and  battered,  and  go  a 
wrestling ;  it  shows  that  her  beautiful  womanly 
individuality  demands  a  softer  element,  and  a 
more  sheltered  way  of  life,  where  she  may  get  as 
much  authority  of  another  kind  and  a  sovereignty 
as  much  more  complete  as  it  will  be  more  undis- 
puted. And  wrhat,  if  then,  it  should  be  proved, 
that  men  have  no  more  right  of  authority  over 
women  than  women  over  men  ?  Yet  the  kind  of 
authority  the  woman  is  to  get,  and  was  really 
made  for,  is  how  different — so  different  that  if  she 
were  to  go  a  stumping  for  it,  hoping  to  win  it  by 
the  sublime  rage  of  a  candidacy,  she  would  come 
out  minus,  even  in  her  victory,  to  be  no  authority 
at  all.  The  precise  way  for  women  never  to  gain, 
always  to  miss  their  kind  of  authority,  is  to  go 
after  the  other  kind  at  the  polls. 


THE   KEFOKM  AGAINST   NATUEE.  107 

Again,  it  is  argued  that,  as  culture  reduces  the 
distinctness  of  the  sexes,  we  are  to  presume  a  final 
obliteration  of  their  distinguishing  qualities,  and 
turn  both  sexes  into  the  great  field  of  public  action 
together.  I  must  totally  deny  both  the  assump- 
tion and  the  inference  made  from  it.  Not  even 
Mr.  Darwin,  as  far  as  I  know,  expects  to  get  the 
races,  any  of  them,  clear  of  sex,  and  pass  them 
finally  by  it.  He  finds  no  principle  of  natural 
selection,  that  is  going  to  select  only  males,  or 
only  females.  Meantime,  the  conception  that  the 
sexes  are  approximated  by  culture  is  too  super- 
ficial to  bear  inspection.  Perfect  the  English  taste 
and  style  of  a  man  and  the  English  taste  and  style 
of  a  woman,  and  how  plausible  in  appearance  will 
the  assimilation  be;  and  yet  they  will  appear, 
on  close  inspection,  to  be  only  more  wonderfully 
male  and  female.  Put  them  into  the  absolute  sci- 
ence of  geometry,  and  they  will  somehow  make 
you  feel  as  if  one  were  engineering  a  camp,  and  the 
other  a  lace  or  a  stocking.  Give  them  both  such 
complete  training,  that  they  will  both  be  respected 
equally  for  their  good  sense,  and  then  it  will  come 
up  as  the  deepest  kind  of  riddle,  that  two  very 
sensible  people  can  be  so  different.  Bring  them 
into  the  very  same  ways  of  thinking,  and  then  it 
will  be  discovered  that  the  same  ways  of  thinking 
do  not,  after  all,  make  the  man-mind  and  the 
woman-mind  work  alike,  but  a  great  way  from 
it.  The  reason  why  we  assume  that  culture  ap- 


108  WOMEN'S  SUFFRAGE; 

proximates  the  characters  of  men  and  women  is, 
that  we  merely  note  first  points  of  resemblance ; 
whereas,  if  we  attend  more  closely,  and  penetrate 
the  question  more  perceptively,  we  have  all  our 
impressions  reversed.  And  it  ought  to  be  so,  as  we 
might  well  enough  see  beforehand.  Is  it  not  plain, 
even  to  our  eyes,  that  the  man-quality  and  the 
woman-quality  are  unlike?  How  then  is  the 
mere  development  of  these  qualities  going  to 
make  them  alike?  What  can  such  development 
do  but  just  bring  out  the  unlike  qualities?  And 
what  is  that  but  to  make  them  more  unlike  ? 

Once  more — it  is  often  assumed  that  the  sexes 
are  designed  to  create  character  in  each  other; 
therefore,  that  women  require  to  be  raised  in  the 
manly  parts  and  functions,  in  order  to  the  true 
raising  of  men.  And  the  writer  above  referred  to 
in  the  Edinburgh  Review  goes  so  far  as  to  say 
that,  "In  the  present  close  association  between 
the  sexes,  men  can  not  retain  manliness  unless 
women  acquire  it."  But  we  have  had  some  rather 
manly  men  in  the  past  ages  of  the  world,  and 
we  have  perhaps  a  rather  larger  proportion,  even 
now.  And  yet  we  do  not  find  that  many  of  our 
women  are  quite  willing  as  yet,  to  set  up  for  being 
manly  women.  Besides,  if  the  assimilating  power 
works  both  ways  in  the  manner  stated,  how  are  the 
women  ever  to  become  more  womanly  unless  the 
men  become  womanly  enough  to  help  them  ?  And 
here  the  whole  masculine  nature,  nay,  and  the 


THE  EEFORM  AGAINST  NATURE.       109 

whole  female  nature  to  boot,  are  out  together  in 
stern  protest  that  men  shall  be  men,  and  not  wom- 
en at  all.  Every  woman  wants  a  man  for  her 
husband,  and  every  husband  wants  to  be  a  man. 
The  argument  therefore  breaks  down  utterly ; 
manly  women  are  not  wanted,  and  womanly  men 
are  not  wanted,  and  most  happy  it  is,  in  both 
cases,  that  they  are  not ;  for  it  is  opposites  here, 
and  not  similarities,  that  make  the  power.  The 
man  will  be  manlier,  that  he  has  a  true  womanly 
wife,  and  the  wife  will  be  the  more  womanly,  that 
she  has  a  manly  husband.  Develop  both  natures 
to  the  utmost,  and  the  development  of  each  will 
help  that  of  the  other.  Nothing  is  more  utterly 
preposterous,  and  more  totally  contrary  to  fact, 
than  that,  if  we  are  to  have  manlier  men,  we  must 
put  the  women  out  into  fight,  and  bronze  their 
soft  faces  into  unbearded  manliness  at  the  tug  of 
the  polls.  Why,  if  we  could  get  the  poor  women 
up  to  this  necessary  pitch  of  manliness,  and  make 
them  stalwart  and  bold  as  Lucifer,  is  there  no  rea- 
son to  fear  that,  on  principles  of  natural  selection, 
we  might  prefer  to  let  them  have  the  polls  and 
migrate  to  some  more  congenial  country. 


110  WOMEN'S  SUFFRAGE; 


YI. 

THE  EEPOKT  OF  HISTORY. 

WOMEN'S  suffrage  is  not  a  fact  of  history,  but  is 
rather  a  fact  on  the  outside  of  history,  waiting  to 
get  in.  We  have  known  but  a  single  example  of 
it;  which  continued  scarcely  long  enough  to  be 
any  example  at  all.  I  refer  of  course  to  the  brief 
chapter  furnished  us  by  the  State  of  ~New  Jersey. 
The  Constitution  of  '76  allowed  "  all  inhabitants 
of  full  age,  and  worth  fifty  pounds,"  the  elective 
franchise.  Fourteen  years  after,  viz  :  in  1790,  the 
Legislature,  in  revising  the  statute,  consented,  at 
the  instance  of  a  Quaker  gentleman,  to  take  off  the 
ambiguity  some  had  felt  as  regards  the  meaning 
of  the  Constitution,  by  inserting  the  words  "  he  or 
she."  Seven  years  afterward,  that  is,  in  1797,  the 
amended  statute  was  farther  amended,  by  insert- 
ing the  word  "free*"  As  yet,  during  the  space 
of  twenty-one  years,  there  had  been  no  instance 
of  female  voting,  but  the  contest  raging  now  be- 
tween the  old  Federal  and  Democratic  parties, 
brought  up  two  candidates  for  the  Council  that 
stood  in  close  balance,  and  the  committee  on  one 
side,  just  before  the  polls  were  closed  for  the  day, 


THE  REFORM  AGAINST  NATURE.       Ill 

offered,  quite  unexpectedly,  a  number  of  female 
voters — the  Newark  Centinel  said  seventy-five — 
who  could  not  of-  course  be  rejected,  Three  years 
later  in  the  Presidential  canvass  of  1800,  when 
Adams  and  Jefferson  were  the  candidates,  the  wom- 
en voted  almost  universally  throughout  the  State 
— women  of  all  colors — from  the  age  of  18  upward. 
Two  years  later,  in  1802,  at  a  contested  election 
the  votes  of  two  or  three  colored  women  deter- 
mined the  choice  of  a  representative.  This  fact 
excited  some  dissatisfaction,  but  nothing  was  done 
to  obtain  a  repeal  of  the  law,  till  after  another  elec- 
tion, by  which  it  was  to  be  tested  yet  more  severe- 
ly. The  question  of  the  county  seat,  that  is  of  the 
location  of  the  court  house  and  jail  for  Essex 
County,  was  the  point  now  in  issue,  and  the  trial 
lay  between  Newark  and  Elizabethtown.  The  ex- 
citement of  the  contest  ran  high,  and  nothing  was 
omitted,  right  or  wrong,  probably,  that  could  help 
to  carry  the  vote.  The  women  of  all  colors  and 
ages  swore  to  their  estate  of  fifty  pounds,  and  in- 
sisting on  their  constitutional  right,  would  not  be 
excluded ;  for  what  board  of  inspectors  could  be 
rough  enough  to  exclude  the  suffrage  right  of  wom- 
en? And  the  voting,  it  seems,  grew  livelier  all 
day,  lor  as  Mr.  Whitehead  informs  us,  the  women 
voted  "  not  only  once,  but  as  often,  as  by  change  of 
dress," — who  can  manage  that  like  a  woman  ?  and 
where  is  the  end  of  it  ! — "  or  complicity  of  the  in- 
spectors, they  might  be  able  to  repeat  the  process." 


112 

The  result  was  that  the  Legislature,  at  their  next 
session,  thoroughly  disgusted  by  the  palpable 
frauds  of  the  canvass,  set  aside  the  vote  by  their 
own  act,  and  located  the  county  seat  themselves. 

Now,  it  will  be  said,  I  suppose,  that  this  was  but 
a  rude,  unregulated  trial,  where  the  precedents  had 
not  gathered  body  enough,  as  yet,  to  govern  the 
proceedings.  And  yet  there  had  been  a  voting  by 
women  eleven  years  ago,  and  a  general  voting  by 
all  the  women  of  the  State  six  years  ago.  At  any 
rate,  we  have  in  this  brief  chapter  of  experiment, 
a  really  appalling  refutation  of  the  promise  so 
frequently  made  in  these  discussions,  that  when 
women  come  to  the  vote,  they  will  bring  in  honesty 
and  decency,  and  make  a  full  end  of  the  frauds 
we  now  deplore  and  think  of  with  so  great  alarm. 
On  the  contrary  we  see,  as  distinctly  as  need  be, 
that  women,  never  trained  to  consider  what  is 
in  a  vote,  may  have  the  lightest  possible  concep- 
tion of  it,  and  can  be  if  they  will,  the  corruptest, 
most  unmanageable  voters  in  the  world.  Besides, 
we  can  also  see  as  distinctly  that  no  board  of 
Inspectors  will  ever  be  able  to  detect  the  disguises 
that  women  can  put^  on,  by  assuming  many  vari- 
eties of  dress.  They  have  every  facility  in  the 
matter  of  dress,  for  taking  on  fifty  characters  in  a 
day,  and  voting  them  all,  without  any  le#st  prob- 
ability of  detection. 

Accordingly,  when  the  Legislature  of  New  Jer- 
sey, in  the  very  next  year,  A.  D.  1807,  come  to  the 


THE  REFOEM  AGAINST  NATURE.       113 

conclusion,  that  they  h^ve  had  enough  of  women's 
suffrage  and  will  now  be  clear  of  it — when  they 
take  -up  their  parable  and  begin  to  say,  "  Whereas 
it  is  highly  necessary  to  safety,  quiet,  good  order, 
and  dignity  of  the  State,"  &c.,  &c.,  it  is  rather  diffi- 
cult not  to  be  imagining  what  we  all,  in  every  State, 
shall  want  to  say  after  a  like  experiment.  Shall 
we  be  able  to  say  it,  or  will  it  be  too  late  ? 

There  is  no  other  example,  so  far  as  I  know,  that 
can  be  cited  for  this  point,  unless  it  be  that  wom- 
en have  been  allowed  both  to  vote  and  to  speak 
in  our  Baptist  and  Methodist  churches,  and  some- 
times, lately,  in  our  Congregational  churches — also 
that  they  are  set  in  offices  of  administration,  and 
sometimes  even  put  in  a  kind  of  apostleship,  by  the 
Christian  assemblies  of  the  Quakers.  But  here,  of 
course,  no  such  bad  consequences  of  the  suffrage 
follow,  for  the  very  manifest  reason,  that  whatever 
is  done  by  the  women  is  done  as  in  a  liberty  of 
prophesying.  They  do  not  propose  to  act  from 
themselves,  or  for  themselves,  as  when  they  meas- 
ure themselves  with  men  at  the  polls,  but  to  act  as 
in  the  spirit  and  as  vehicles  of  a  divine  grace  and 
teaching.  This  very  wide  distinction  sufficiently 
conserves  their  modesty,  and  it  must  be  confessed 
that  in  the  case  of  the  Quakers,  it  appears  to  suffi- 
ciently conserve  their  modesty  also  in  the  use  of 
their  administrative  functions,  where  it  could  not 
as  well  be  expected. 

Dropping  now  these  more  particular  illustra- 


114  WOMEN'S  SUFFRAGE  ; 

tions  where  some  kind  of  voting  has  been  allowed 
to  women,  I  propose  another  and  more  general 
kind  of  argument,  which,  including  many  modes 
and  varieties,  may  be  expected  to  justify  itself  as  it 
proceeds.  The  general  verdict  of  history,  as  I 
conceive,  is  something  like  this,  that  some  kind  of 
mischief,  or  bad  fatality  has  been  almost  always 
discoverable,  where  women  have  become  forward 
actors  and.  managers  in  political  affairs. 

This  I  know  is  not  the  common  impression. 
What  in  fact  do  we  hear,  several  times  a  day,when 
it  is  alleged  that  women  have  no  governing  right 
and  no  fitness  to  be  in  places  of  authority,  but  that 
England,  one  of  the  greatest  and  most  forward 
kingdoms  of  the  world,  has  a  qneen  for  its  ruler, 
a  woman  celebrated  for  no  specially  brilliant  gifts, 
and  yet  a  much  respected,  properly  successful  head 
magistrate.  If  now  this  particular  English  woman 
can  rule  one  empire,  may  not  other  women  often 
more  gifted,  suffice  to  make  good  voters,  or  even 
good  under-magistrates  ?  But  if  we  are  to  come  at 
the  real  merit  of  this  argument,  it  may  be  very  im- 
portant to  find,  when  the  queen  bears  rule,  who 
rules  the  queen  ?  No  woman  stands  higher  proba- 
bly in  the  scale  of  ability  to  govern,  than  the  fa- 
mous Isabella  of  Spain.  And  yet,  if  we  will  see 
the  exact  truth,  she  is  nothing  but  a  lay-figure 
queen,  behind  whom  stands  her  great  high  coun- 
cilor Ximenes,  robing  her  with  honors  from  himself. 
She,  that  is  Ximenes,  hedged  about  her  husband 


THE  REFORM  AGAINST  NATURE.       115 

as  by  a  kind  of  sentry  guard,  fortified  him  by  cer- 
emonies, tied  him  up  by  oaths,  all  which  may 
have  been  very.kind,  but  not  particularly  gracious. 
She  also,  that  is  Ximenes,  prepared  the  Inquisition 
by  his  priestly  counsel,  leaving  it  to  her  to  adorn 
his  red  dragon  institute  by  her  beautiful  graces  and 
charms.  There  was  nothing  in  fact  that  could 
be  called  a  felicity  in  her  administration,  but  the 
ornament  she  could  put  in  oppression,  and  fetter- 
ing, unreliable  aid  she  gave  to  Columbus.  Take 
away  Ximenes,  and  there  is  no  counsel ;  take 
away  Columbus,  and  there  is  no  brightening  fact 
or  glory. 

There  is  also  another  consideration,  as  respects 
these  reigning  women.  After  all,  they  are  not 
women,  but  men ;  for  they  do  not  stand  in  their 
lines  as  successors  of  women,  but  in  almost  all 
cases  as  successors  of  men.  The  gap  they  fill  is  a 
gap  in  some  male  line.  And  they  bring  very  lit- 
tle into  it  commonly  but  their  name  and  signa- 
ture. They  are  like  ciphers  between  the  other 
figures,  important  for  the  spacing  they  make,  and 
not  for  what  they  signify  themselves.  They  sign 
as  women,  rule  as  women,  it  is  true,  but  the  func- 
tion they  wield  is  felt,  both  by  themselves  and 
their  people,  to  be  a  man's  function,  and  the  queen- 
hood of  it  has  a  certain  masculine  force,  because 
it  is  only  a  bridge  that  connects  a  future  with  a 
former  masculine  order  and  law.  Besides,  the 
councilors  and  chief  ministers  are  always  men, 


116  WOMEN'S  SUFFRAGE; 

and  there  is  not,  in  fact,  a  queen  of  all  Europe  and 
probably  never  was,  who  could  make  a  woman  her 
chief  minister,  and  carry  on  the  government.  Kings 
enough  there  have  been,  that  were  managed 
and  kept  by  women,  when  proposing  to  have  men 
for  their  council ;  but  no  queen  could  hold  her 
place  a  week,  having  only  feminine  statesmen  for 
her  ministers.  In  all  which  we  perceive,  as'  clearly 
as  need  be,  that  the  queenly  governments  are  after 
all  rather  masculine  than  feminine. 

Take  now  a  single  other  example  in  this  field, 
and  it  shall  be  the  one  that  favors  least  the  view 
just  presented;  the  example  I  mean  of  Elizabeth 
of  England.  She  came  to  the  throne,  not  as  suc- 
ceeding a  man,  but  a  woman,  which  so  far  was  a 
considerable  disadvantage  ;  and  yet,  when  viewed 
more  closely,  it  will  be  seen  to  have  put  her  in  a 
condition  of  the  greatest  possible  advantage.  For 
Mary,  who  came  in  after  Edward,  had  been  a 
great  disappointment  and  affliction  to  all  best  feel- 
ing in  the  nation,  so  that  when  Elizabeth  came  in, 
after  Mary,  she  was  hailed  with  great  eagerness 
and  expectation,  as  the  true  successor  of  Edward. 
In  this  manner  she  derived  no  small  part  of  her 
prestige  in  the  government,  from  the  fact  that  she 
represented  the  Protestant  cause  in  such  manner 
as  could  be  expected  of  no  other  princely  charac- 
ter of  the. time. 

And  what  now  shall  we  say  of  her  reign  ?     Su- 
perficially regarded,  or  surveyed  from  a  little  dis- 


THE  KEFOBM  AGAINST  NATDKE.  117 

tance  off,  it  appears  to  be  thoroughly  successful, 
and  historians  have  written  most  admiringly  of 
the  splendid  ability  displayed  by  her  queenly  ad- 
ministration. But  if  we  are  disposed  to  have  a 
deeper  inspection  of  her  merit,  we  find  it  very 
nearly  impossible  to  imagine,  that  a  woman  of  so 
many  weaknesses,  and  tossed  by  so  many  uncom- 
fortable tempers,  can  have  added  much  to  the 
success  of  her  reign  that  was  fairly  from  herself. 
She  was  surrounded,  as  it  were,  and  caged  by  a 
body  of  nobles,  and  grave  councilors,  and  great 
men  pillared  in  wise  moderation  and  heroic  self- 
respect,  and  she  knocked  herself  about  among 
them,  first  against  one,  and  then  against  another, 
persecuting  some,  annoying  all,  and  calling  it 
government ;  whereas,  in  fact,  they  all  were  gov- 
erning her  with  as  much  patience  as  they  could, 
or  as  much  impatience  as  they  must,  and  keeping 
her,  by  their  changing  attractions  and  repulsions, 
within  the  endurable  conditions.  There  was  never  a 
finer  illustration  of  the  fact  that  women  as  such  are 
not  called  to  use  authority,  for  with  all  the  force  she 
employed,  the  tyrannical  edicts  she  pronounced, 
and  the  imperious  and  haughty  airs  she  assumed, 
she  was  held  up  largely  by  the  courteously  moder- 
^  ated  pity  of  her  great  men ;  and  as  to  genuine  per- 
sonal authority,  she  had  never  a  trace  of  it  in  the 
feeling  of  anybody.  She  had  an  almost  universal 
jealousy  of  women,  and  especially  of  fine  women. 
Indeed  she  very  nearly  hated  the  sex,  passing  her 


118  WOMEN'S  SUFFRAGE  ; 

order  in  a  progress  through  Essex  and  Sussex, 
"  that  no  head  or  member  of  any  college,  or  ca- 
thedral, should  bring  a  wife,  or  any  other  woman, 
into  the  precincts  of  it  to  abide  in  the  same,  on 
pain  of  forfeiture  of  all  ecclesiastical  promotion." 
In  her  style,  we  discover  an  almost  laughable  am- 
bition to  show  herself  a  man ;  rolling  on  her  pon- 
derous convolutions  of  dignity  in  the  unimpres- 
sive tumble  of  a  school  of  porpoises  at  sea,  all  the 
while  about  to  say  something  manly  in  a  manly 
way,  only  finding  at  last  no  place  for  it.  She  is 
courted  by  everybody,  and  wants  to  be  courted  by 
twice  as  many.  She  promises  her  people  that  she 
will  marry,  but  is  kept  from  it  apparently,  by  the 
unwelcome  fact  that  her  husband  will  be  the  last 
of  her  suitors.  She  receives  whole  cargoes  of  billet- 
doux  in  the  most  laughable  and  absurd  excesses  of 
flattery,  all  of  which  she  is  fool  enough  to  value, 
and  store  away  for  the  future,  instead  of  throwing 
them  in  the  fire — else  why  are  they  now  preserved 
to  us  ?  She  was  not  less  sure  that  her  vixenly  face 
was  beautiful,  than  she  was  that  she  was  doing 
every  thing  in  the  kingdom  herself.  She,  Eliza- 
beth, supported  the  French  Huguenots;  she, 
Elizabeth,  took  the  part  of  the  Low  Countries  ;  she, 
Elizabeth,  vanquished  the  Spanish  armada ;  she, 
Elizabeth,  was,  in  fact,  the  general  doer  of  all 
that  went  on.  No  ;  there  was  one  thing  she  did 
not  do — the  death  of  Mary,  Queeii  of  Scots — she 
wept  over  that ! 


THE   KEFOKM   AGAINST   NATURE.  119 

Now  it  is  not  to  be  denied  that  England  was 
brought  on  a  great  way,  in  the  long  reign  of 
Elizabeth.  Things  were  at  a  certain  renovation- 
point,  where  they  must  go  on  somehow  unless 
very  much  hindered,  and  forty-five  years  of  dura- 
tion must  show  a  considerable  stride  of  advance 
if  they  showed  any.  Her  court  endured  her  as  an 
odious,  royally  detestable  woman,  and  sought  to 
make  the  best  of  her  as  far  as  they  could.  And 
when  she  died  it  was  not  a  day  too  soon.  She 
had  filled  the  masculine  gap,  and  been  as  much 
of  a  man  in  the  line,  as  perhaps  she  could ;  but 
they  wanted  now  a  man — whether  to  be  worse  or 
better,  they  must  learn  for  themselves.  Perhaps 
it  may  be  said  with  truth,  as  it  is  in  fact  often 
said,  that  Elizabeth  of  England  is  the  highest  ex- 
ample of  queenly  authority  afforded  by  the  histo- 
ry of  the  world.  I  have  sketched  this  outline  of 
her  reign,  partly  in  deference  to  that  impression  ; 
and  it  is  under  the  same,  that  we  so  often  have  the 
argument  for  woman's  suffrage  and  her  right  of 
rule,  turned  by  the  citation  of  her  example.  But 
she  was  only  a  bad  core  in  a  fair  apple ;  and  if 
another  woman  had  succeeded  her,  promising  to 
be  just  like  her  in  her  rule,  it  is  doubtful  whether 
she  could  have  held  the  reins  in  hand  for  a  single 
six-months. 

I  have  spent  thus  much  of  time  on  the  govern-' 
ing  women,  because  they  are  cited  with  so  great 
frequency  and  confidence  in  the  general  question 


120 

I  am  discussing.  In  the  first  place,  they  are  in 
men's  places  just  to  personate  the  filling  of  them, 
and  be  helped  by  the  male  formalities  of  the  po- 
sition. In  the  next  place,  they  do  every  thing  by 
men,  and  so,  putting  always  the  very  highest  male 
talent  of  the  nation  at  the  point  of  real  headship 
over  its  affairs.  And  then,  once  more,  they  have 
never  in  any  one  case,  shown  more  than  a  very 
meager  authority  and  capacity  of  rule  in  them- 
selves. 

Taking  now  a  more  decisive  and  direct  way  of 
argument,  let  us  look  along  down  the  lines  of  his- 
tory and  see  how  far  the  part  women  have  taken 
in  government,  and  their  very  close  association 
with  government,  and  with  governing  men,  has 
operated  well  or  beneficently.  We  have  two  ex- 
amples in  history,  one  ancient  and  the  other  mod- 
ern, where  women  have  taken  the  military  com- 
mand, by  a  purely  divine  call,  and  have,  so  far, 
administered  a  sovereignty  in  God's  name,  inde- 
pendently of  all  human  control.  I  speak  of  Debo- 
rah the  prophetess  and  Joan  of  Arc.  They  are 
unlike  in  some  respects,  and  more  unlike,  if  we 
take  the  sublime  lyric  of  Deborah  as  written  by 
herself,  and  not  as  composed  for  her  by  some  ad- 
miring poet  who  had  caught  the  inspirations  of 
her  story.  But  they  both  agree  in  this,  that  they 
act,  not  in  their  own  will  and  council,  but  by  a  cer- 
tain irruption  of  divine  impulse  upon  them.  They 
do  not  so  much  fight  in  a  way  of  moving  battle, 


THE  REFORM  AGAINST  NATURE.        121 

as  sail  over  their  fields,  and  see  the  hand  of  God 
working  for  them.  They  are  God's  angels  now, 
before  their  time,  set  on  like  David's  twenty  thou- 
sand angels  who  are  twenty  thousand  chariots  of 
God.  It  is  not  important  to  settle  the  precise  func- 
tion by  which  they  operate,  or  how  far  they  may 
be  raised  ecstatically  above  or  out  of  themselves. 
Enough  that  they  are  prophetesses  in  some  very 
superlative  sense,  and  are  therefore  not  examples 
to  be  cited,  in  a  question  that  is  only  concerned  to 
find  what  capacities  of  public  life  and  rule  belong 
to  women,  as  acting  from  their  natural  functions. 
The  talk  of  Balaam's  animal  might  as  well  be  cited 
to  show  the  talking  capacity  of  his  kind.  With 
these  two  wonderful  women  some  class  Judith, 
and  perhaps  rightly,  only  she  appears  to  be  rather 
fanatically  possessed  than  ecstatically  raised,  in 
the  bloody  feat  of  her  story. 

Opening  a  little  more  largely  now  the  scripture 
history,  we  discover  as  many  as  five  pairs  of  char- 
acters that  exhibit,  in  one  light  or  another, the  agen- 
cy of  women,  acting  through,  or  upon  the  govern- 
ing power  in  their  husbands.  The  best,  and  only 
satisfactory  one  of  the  five,  is  revealed  in  the  story 
of  Esther  and  Ahasuerus.  Here  we  have  a  good  il- 
lustration of  what  power  there  may  be  in  beauty, 
or  the  subject  state  of  beauty,  as  compared  with 
force.  An  exquisitely  fascinating  woman,  as  beauti- 
ful in  her  manners  and  character,  it  would  seem,  as 
in  her  person,  yet  the  daughter  of  a  captive  and  gen- 


122  WOMEN'S  SUFFKAGE; 

erally  despised  race,  lias  such  power  with  a  haughty 
monarch,  that  she  is  able,  by  her  intercession,  to 
turn  the  resentments  of  his  proud  ministers  upon 
their  own  head,  and  also  to  deliver  her  despised  race 
from  an  edict  of  extermination  already  proclaimed. 
She  governs  in  a  sense  the  government,  and  yet 
without  exercising  or  exhibiting,  any  one  political 
or  governing  talent  in  herself.  She  is  manipula- 
ted in  her  story,  at  every  turn,  by  her  brave  uncle 
Mordecai ;  and  apart  from  him,  she  is  only  a  sim- 
ple Jewish  girl.  He  it  is  that  makes  her  what  she 
is,  and  does  by  her  what  she  does. 

The  case  of  Pilate's  wife  and  Pilate  is  different, 
but  scarcely  less  interesting.  Who  she  was  we  do 
not  know,  but  she  probably  was  young,  and  had 
not  been  hardened  as  yet  by  the  false  casuistries 
of  public  life.  She  is  simple,  unsophisticated,  has 
the  tender  and  true  feeling — all  that  is  included  in 
the  morally  perceptive  insight  of  a  woman  ;  being 
the  only  one  of  all  the  unbelieving  crowd  on  that 
dreadful  day  of  the  trial  of  Jesus,  who  distinctly 
saw  his  innocence,  and  felt  her  womanly  sympa- 
thies drawn  out  for  him.  She  was  perhaps  a  Jewess 
and  religious,  for  she  had  dreams  that  took  hold  of 
her  religious  nature,  and  filled  her  with  dread  of 
some  unknown  evil  impending  over  her  husband 
and  the  nation.  Her  warning  evidently  shook  him, 
but  it  did  not  quite  prevail.  Here  is  a  woman  at  the 
side  of  the  government,  it  must  be  confessed,  who 
sees  farther  into  the  great  matter  in  question  than 


THE   EEFOKM    AGAINST    NATURE.  123 

all  the  priests  and  magistrates,  and  who,  if  the 
decision  had  been  hers,  would  have  brought  the 
trial  to  a  different  issue.  And  yet,  if  she  had  been 
the  magistrate  presiding,  she  could  not  have  con- 
trolled the  crowd,  or  maintained  even  a  semblance 
of  order,  and  the  close  would  have  been  a  murder 
by  £he  mob  not  less  revolting.  A  great  many 
women  would  seize  more  unerringly  on  the  judicial 
merit  of  accused  persons,  than  even  the  most  com- 
petent judges,  and  yet  having  no  gift  of  authority, 
they  couH  not  steady  the  order  of  proceedings 
sufficiently  to  save  the  tribunal  of  justice  itself. 

A  third  of  the  cases  referred  to  is  furnished  by 
Samson ;  a  man  raised  up  for  government,  who 
yet  is  taken  away  from  his  very  calling  itself,  and 
made  a  cipher,  by  his  subjection  to  a  woman. 
No  other  character  in  all  human  history,  excepting 
Christ  himself,  begins  upon  as  high  a  key  of  pros- 
pect, as  this  very  absurd  man  Samson.  Super- 
naturally  promised,  in  signs  of  surpassing  sublim- 
ity ;  nourished  in  the  strictest  and  most  sacred  terms 
of  virtue ;  gifted  alike  with,  prowess,  and  strength, 
and  wit,  and  poetry ;  raised  up,  we  should  say,  to 
be  the  deliverer  of  his  people,  in  their  wretched 
state  of  anarchy  and  defeat ;  he  yet  justifies  no 
expectation,  lives  to  no  purpose,  and  goes  out 
finally,  as  a  snuffed  candle,  at  the  end  of  a  most 
foolish  and  absurd  life.  And  the  secret  of  his 
wretched  collapse  is,  that  he  is  caught  in  the  coils 
of  an  artful  and  intriguing  wife,  who  is  too  good 


124: 

a  Philistine  to  let  him  be  a  Jew,  and  is  only  going 
to  make  him  show  how  a  great  strong  man  and 
predestined  champion,  may  be  taken  away  from 
his  country  and  his  time  and  the  expectation  of 
his  time,  by  a  fascinating  and  perfidious  woman. 

Ahab  was  a  much  less  promising  character  than 
Samson  to  begin  with,  and  it  may  be  that  Jeze- 
bel did  not  make  him  a  great  deal  worse.  But 
she  did  what  she  could,  and  by  her  devilish  insti- 
gation, would  have  made  a  much  better  king  the 
insufferable  tyrant  and  robber  of  his  people. 

What  kind  of  influence  Herodias  had  upon  Her- 
od, we  know ;  and  the  probability  is,  that  this 
bad  woman  had  been  training  in  his  brother  Phil- 
ip's court,  for  just  such  kind  of  monstrosities — the 
taking  off  of  a  good  man's  head,  the  head  of  a 
prophet,  that  she  might  spite  his  faithfulness,  and 
turn  his  reproofs  to  mockery.  It  was  no  advan- 
tage certainly,  to  Herod,  that  he  had  this  helper 
by  him  in  his  government. 

Turning  now  to  the  Greek  and  Roman  histories, 
I  will  cite  the  instance  of  the  two  most  forward 
public  women  in  both :  viz.,  Aspasia  and  Cle- 
opatra. We  do  not  as  definitely  know  the  story 
of  Aspasia  as  we'  could  wish.  She  is  sometimes 
reported  in  terms,  that  put  her  at  a  low  point  in 
the  scale  of  virtue.  Pericles  was  undoubtedly 
captivated  by  her  charms,  as  he  might  very  well 
be,  and  he  may  have  divorced  his  own  wife  to  put 
himself  more  completely  in  her  power.  She  could 


THE  REFORM  AGAINST  NATURE.       125 

not  have  been  a  loose  or  low  woman.  There 
appears,  in  fact,  to  be  no  better  example  in  all 
history,  of  what  a  woman  near  the  state  may 
have  the  talent  to  accomplish,  than  hers.  Bat 
her  mode  of  life  does  not  indicate  that  she  was  a 
political  or  managing  woman.  She  was  a  woman 
rather  of  society,  and  moved  on  the  state  princi- 
pally by  the  great  inspirations  she  excited.  The 
story  that  she  wrote  one  of  the  chief  orations  of 
Pericles  was  probably  not  true,  but  she  may  have 
given  him  all  needed  thoughts  and  inspirations 
for  it.  That  she  raised  two  public  wars,  is  not 
much  believed ;  though  she  may  have  put  some  fire 
into  the  wars  after  they  were  kindled.  She  kept 
her  house  open,  maintaining  a  kind  of  general 
levee  for  the  principal  men  and  women  of  the 
city  ;  in  doing  which,  she  was  not  so  much  garnish- 
ing the  court  of  Pericles,  as  he  himself  providing 
the  honors  of  the  court  of  Aspasia.  The  fascina 
tions  of  her  beauty,  and  the  still  more  fascinating 
charms  of  her  conversations,  made  her  the  adored 
woman,  and  her  house  the  shrine  of  all  the  great 
men  of  Athens.  Here  it  was  that  oratory  and 
style  in  writing  found  their  true  ideal  and  true 
laws  of  criticism.  Here  came  up  all  the  great 
questions  of  art ;  for  it  was  the  birthday  of  art  for 
the  city.  Phidias  the  sculptor,  Damon  the  musi- 
cian, Euripides  the  king  of  tragedy — all  these  and 
others,  caught  their  fires  and  took  their  ideals  here. 
Plato  came  in  often,  and  did  not  omit,  on  a  cer- 


120  WOMEN'S  SUFFRAGE; 

tain  occasion,  to  congratulate  her  and  the  city  on 
the  speech  she  had  made  over  the  fallen  at  the 
battle  of  Lechseum.  Socrates  himself  confesses 
the  great  benefit  he  has  received  from  this  won- 
derful woman.  After  the  death  of  Pericles,  dis- 
covering something  hopeful  in  one  Lysicles,  an 
obscure  person,  she  set  the  tide  of  her  inspirations 
lifting  under  him,  and  made  even  him  a  respected, 
widely  influential  citizen.  She  quickened,  as  it 
were,  the  whole  mind  of  her  time,  and  was  felt  as 
a  soul  of  beauty  going  through  every  depart- 
ment of  Athenian  life  and  society.  All  which,  it 
will  be  claimed  by  some,  makes  her  a  striking  ex- 
ample of  what  a  woman  may  do  in  the  spheres  of 
public  office  and  power.  On  the  contrary,  it  could 
not  be  more  visible,  it  seems  to  me,  that  had  she 
been  a  managing  woman  at  all,  she  never  could 
have  been  any  thing  else  that  she  was.  She 
swayed  the  state,  she  filled  the  city  with  ornament 
and  life,  flowing  down,  as  it  were,  upon  all  art  and 
society  from  above.  And  in  this  view,  she  is  even 
a  most  clear  example  of  how  much  might  be  spoil- 
ed in  a  great  woman,  by  getting  her  submerged 
under  the  stresses  and  managing  devices  of  what 
is  called  statesmanship.  Done  up  in  state-craft; 
Aspasia  would  have  only  been  a  very  common 
woman,  and  not  in  any  sense  the  quickening  soul 
of  her  times. 

Cleopatra  figures  in  the  Roman  story  after  a 
fashion  equally  conspicuous,  but  in  ways  of  politi- 


THE    REFORM    AGAINST    NATURE.  127 

cal  intrigue  that  are  only  ways  of  mischief.  She 
loses  a  throne,  and  she  gains  it  two  or  three  times 
over,  by  the  fascinations  of  her  beauty  and  the 
unmatched  elegance  of  her  manners.  Now  she 
governs  with  a  Caesar,  and  now  she  undertakes 
for  Antony,  feasting  with  him  till  they  both  have 
wasted  their  opportunities,  and  then  fighting  a  bat- 
tle at  sea  for  him,  to  lose  it  by  mere  panic  and 
die  with  him  in  the  fatalities  of  a  common  dis- 
grace. And  yet  her  fatalities  are  only  the  fatali- 
ties of  an  immensely  talented  and  almost  over- 
splendid  woman.  She  played  her  sex  into  the 
stake,  as  what  woman  is  not  likely  to  do,  and  the 
passion  of  the  mixture  took  away  the  discretion, 
making  public  affairs  the  pretext  only  of  her 
private  heats  and  follies. 

Pass  on  now  to  a  large,  long  chapter,  full  of 
instruction  as  regards  this  question  of  the  true 
womanly  place  in  government,  the  chapter  I  mean 
which  comprises  the  history  of  so  many  Louises, 
on  the  downhill  slope  of  the  kingdom :  viz.,  the 
four  that  preceded  the  Revolution.  Nothing  dis- 
tinguishes these  150  years  of  history  so  completely, 
as  to  say  that  they  are  the  times  of  the  mistresses. 
The  kings  governed  the  kingdom,  and  the  mis- 
tresses governed  the  kings.  And  the  mistresses 
commenced,  tier  above  tier,  and  tier  behind  tier, 
pushing  on  their  rivalries  and  their  infinite  cross 
combinations,  stopping  short  of  murder,  when  it 
was^couvenient,  not  otherwise,  caring  nothing  for 


128  WOMEN'S  SUFFRAGE; 

the  state,  save  to  make  it  yield  what  money  may 
be  wanted,  frittering  away  and  rotting  down  all 
public  love,  and  making  all  high  character  a  prey. 
There  was  no  morality,  or  truth,  or  public  love. 
The  intercourse  of  palaces  was  the  intercourse  of 
lies.  The  womanly  state-craft  everybody  knew 
was  heartless,  cruel ;  instigated  only  by  hate  and 
jealousy,  and  all  base  passion.  Nobody  believed 
any  thing,  and  there  was  nothing  to  be  believed. 
The  kings  cared  nothing  for  their  people,  wanted 
nothing  but  to  please  their  women,  and  keep  up 
the  necessary  appearances.  In  this  terrible  loath- 
someness, the  core  of  the  nation  was  rotting  for  so 
long  a  time  ;  till,  finally,  there  was  not  fiber  enough 
left  to  hold  the  functions  of  the  state  together; 
and  who  was  governing,  at  any  given  time,  this 
woman  or  that,  or  the  king,  or  the  king's  chief 
minister,  no  one  knew.  Sometimes  not  even  the 
royal  council  could  tell  what  hand  was  moving  in 
this  or  that  affair.  Thus,  poor  Keckar,  the  minis- 
ter, not  consulted  when  M.  Antoinette  was  gather- 
ing the  military  to  put  down  the  States  General, 
Bays :  "  I  never  knew,  with  any  degree  of  cer- 
tainty, the  end  at  which  the  queen's  party  wished 
to  arrive.  There  were  secrets,  and  secrets  within 
secrets,  and  I  believe  that  the  king  himself  was  not 
acquainted  with  them  all.  It  was  probably  deter- 
mined, as  circumstances  afforded  opportunity,  to 
inveigle  the  king  into  measures  no  one  would  have 
ventured  to  mention  to  him  directly."  Next^day 


THE    KEFOKM    AGAINST    NATURE.  129 

Neckar  was  dismissed  and  sent  into  exile,  and  as 
good  room  and  space  were  given  for  the  pending 
revolution  as  need  be.  After  150  years  of  state- 
mistressing,  after  so  many  cabals  of  the  woman 
cabinets,  and  such  immense  concoctions  of  u  se- 
crets within  secrets"  which  composed  their  state- 
craft, government  was  in  fact  already  worn  out 
and  gone,  ended  before  the  revolution,  and  the 
revolution  came  in  fact  just  because  it  was  ended. 
The  finis  »was  already  reached,  and  nothing  re- 
mained but  to  shut  up  the  book  and  put  it  away. 

Now  these  rapid  and  rather  desultory  glances 
at  what  may  be  called  the  governing  agencies  of 
wTomen  reveal,  as  the  general  fact,  a  great  want  of 
felicity  in  them.  They  have  done  best  when  fill- 
ing occasional  gaps  in  the  male  succession  of 
thrones,  and  worst,  by  a  great  deal,  when  mixed 
with  men,  to  reign  as  favorites  and  be  themselves 
the  wisdom  of  courts.  Taken  as  councilors,  dis- 
pensers of  offices  and  honors,  first  managers  and 
specially  skilled  intriguers,  they  have  made  a  very 
disorderly  and  mean  history.  When  we  put  them 
to  the  ballot,  and  give  them  rights  of  office,  their 
relations  to  men  will  be  different ;  far  less  select, 
and  probably,  after  a  short  time,  quite  as  deep  in 
the  intrigues  both  of  sex  and  office  together.  In- 
deed, we  can  not  comprehend  at  all  this  matter  of 
women's  suffrage  till  we  make  distinct  account  of 
the  joint  working  of  these  two  kinds  of  intrigues. 

6* 


130 

"We  can  possibly  bear  the  intrigues  of  men,  for 
they  have  but  a  single  character ;  but  what  can  we 
do  when  the  double  complications  of  two  such 
double-acting  intrigues  are  twisted  into  the  web 
of  our  society  and  public  policy  and  public  law  ? 
If  it  does  not  shortly  become  the  foulest  mixture 
the  world  has  seen,  it  will  not  be  that  all  necessary 
ingredients  and  opportunities  are  wanting.  This 
harnessing  of  men  and  women  together,  and  call- 
ing it  government,  is  making,  in  fact,  a  conjunc- 
tion against  nature,  which  has  the  doom  of  failure 
on  it  beforehand.  The  great  law  commentator, 
Montesquieu,  says,  that  "  women  have  naturally  so 
many  duties  to  fulfill,  duties  which  are  peculiarly 
theirs,  that  they  can  not  be  sufficiently  excluded 
from  every  thing  inspiring  other  ideas."  I  would 
say,  instead,  that  government  is  to  govern,  and 
that  women  are  not ;  and  therefore,  that  when  gov- 
ernment makes  conjunction  with  women,  it  must 
take  up  ideas  that  can  not  be  sufficiently  excluded. 
It  is  a  common  assumption  that  appears  and 
reappears  at  every  turn  in  the  advocacy  of  wom- 
en's suffrage,  that  our  elections  will  be  mod- 
erated and  made  more  respectable  by  the  pres- 
ence and  participation  of  women  ;  because  the 
women  themselves  will  be  more  restrained  in  their 
manners,  and  will  have  a  restraining,  mitigating 
effect  on  the  men.  Nothing  could  be  more  agree- 
able to  be  hoped,  and  when  we  note  the  civilizing 
effect  of  the  presence  of  women,  coming  in  as  they 


THE  REFORM  AGAINST  NATURE.       131 

sometimes  do,  to  grace  our  public  assemblies,  we 
are  tempted  to  believe  that  such  kind  of  advan- 
tages will  be  gained.  But  we  need  not  go  far,  I 
think,  to  gather  up  facts  or  incidents  that  indicate 
a  result  exactly  opposite.  "Women  admire  a  great 
deal  more  strongly  than  men,  and  when  they  have 
a  candidate,  one  who  has  become  the  idol  of  their 
choice,  there  is  nothing  they  will  not  do  to  carry 
their  end  in  his  election  ;  just  as  the  proud  Duchess 
of  Devonshire  allowed  a  butcher  at  the  hustings 
to  kiss  her,  on  condition  of  his  voting  for  Fox. 
If  this  high-life,  conventional  woman  could  be  so 
far  taken  out  of  the  proprieties,  in  the  hope  of 
gaining  a  vote,  how  will  it  be  with  all  sorts  of 
women,  mixing  with  all  sorts  of  men,  in -doors  and 
out-of-doors,  and  playing  such  intrigues  of  candi- 
dacy, for  weeks  before  and  after,  as  the  candidates 
of  both  sexes  can  arrange  in  the  farming  of  their 
vote.  For  a  time,  for  three  or  four  elections  prob- 
ably, the  effect  may  be  only  good,  but  no  such 
conjunction  of  men  and  women,  in  the  fierce  strug- 
gles and  heats  of  party,  can  ever  be  kept  on  foot 
for  any  length  of  time,  without  breeding  results 
of  profligacy  that  are  fearfully  disastrous. 

At  the  same  time  it  is  not  true  that  women  take 
excitements  less  severely  than  men.  We  think  so 
now,  because  we  have  them  at  such  a  remove  of 
distance  as  allows  them  to  be  kept  in  softer  tem- 
pers. But  what  have  we  seen  at  the  South,  but 
that  women  are  the  most  intolerant,  most  unreason- 


132 

ing  haters  to  be  found.  We  may  almost  say  that 
it  was  the  women,  goading  the  men,  who  finally 
forced  them  into  rebellion.  And  what  do  we  see 
but  that  women  even  now,  as  in  Te'xas,  are  de- 
termined to  have  their  animosity,  and,  at  least,  to 
get  the  satisfaction  of  having  duly  punished  some- 
body. And  the  picture  they  are  in  is  only  the 
more  absurd,  that  they  keep  their  hate  alive,  when 
there  is  no  longer  anybody  alive  to  feel  it.  In  all 
which  we  are  to  see  that  women  are  the  most  vio- 
lent partisans  in  the  world,  and  that  nothing  is 
more  certain,  when  the  women's  suffrage  plan  is 
carried,  than  that  all  party  contests  will  be  raised 
to  a  pitch  of  exasperation  never  before  seen.  "We 
ought  to  anticipate  just  this  from  what  we  know 
of  men  themselves ;  for  there  is  a  certain  class  of 
men  that  have  a  softer  fiber,  and  a  finer  and  more 
fragile  person,  and  these  are  always  the  persons  to 
be  most  extravagant,  most  violent,  and  most  fiercely 
denunciatory  in  all  measures  and  causes  of  reform. 
The  sturdy,  thick-bodied,  masculine  men  keep  their 
balance  and  their  key  of  moderation,  but  these 
others  are  vitriol  and  gall  to  every  sort  of  oppo- 
sition. Accordingly  we  shall  see,  when  the  days 
of  women's  suffrage ' are  come,  that  all  we  had  to 
say  of  moderation  and  a  gentler  type  of  manners, 
in  our  political  affairs,  has  been  a  most  sad  mis- 
take, that  party  strife  was  never  before  so  bitter 
and  so  mixed  with  hate.  "Women  are  a  great  deal 
more  violent,  constitutionally  speaking,  than  men  ; 


THE  REFORM  AGAINST  NATURE.       133 

the  very  delicacy  of  their  nature  makes  them  so, 
and  as  soon  as  they  are  called  to  violence,  which 
now  they  are  not,  they  will  make  an  element  of 
unmitigated  bitterness.  When  the  charities  of  a 
womanly  nature  are  burned  out,  and  nothing  left 
but  spleen  or  frenzied  passion,  we  have  a  specta- 
cle both  sad  and  frightful. 


134  WOMEN'S  SUFFRAGE  ; 


VII. 

PROBABLE  EFFECTS. 

I  ALLUDED  just  now,  in  the  close  of  the  last 
chapter,  to  one  or  two  facts  in  which  we  get  slight 
indications  of  the  pitch  of  excitement  to  which 
women  are  likely  to  be  carried  in  the  field  of  politi- 
cal action,  and  also  of  the  kinds  and  qualities  of 
that  excitement;  how  far  loosened  from  the  wom- 
anly proprieties,  how  fierce  possibly,  and  bitter  it 
may  be.  We  have  only  a  very  few  facts  devel- 
oped as  yet,  to  show  how  this  almost  unknown 
type  of  progress,  so  called,  is  going  to  behave 
itself.  Many  persons  never  see  any  thing  by  their 
imagination,  taking  it  for  granted,  that  what  is 
fact,  is  going  to  be  fact,  and  that  under  all  newest, 
most  untried  conditions,  fact  will  behave  just  as  it 
always  has.  In  this  way  it  is  taken  for  granted, 
we  may  see,  in  the x  most  innocent  way  possible, 
that  women  are  going  to  be  women  as  they  always 
have  been ;  to  be  gentle,  retired,  quiet,  unselfish, 
carrying  an  element  of  dignity,  and  grace,  and 
presiding  good  manners  into  the  caucuses  and 
campaign  assemblies  of  which  they  are  become  a 


THE   KEFORM   AGAINST   NATURE.  135 

part ;  just  as  they  did  when  they  came  in,  once  in 
four  or  five  years,  to  fill  a  gallery  and  look  on. 
And  so  it  is  computed  that  when  they  drop  into 
place  under  the  new  reform,  to  be  political  women, 
they  will  inaugurate  a  kind  of  millennial  age  of 
good  manners  and  respectful  conduct,  by  which 
every  thing  in  political  life  and  society  will  be 
raised.  Such  kind  of  prognostications  are  simply 
stupid,  wholly  without  perception.  Why  the 
change  we  are  proposing  here  is  radical  enough, 
when  time  enough  is  added,  to  alter  even  the  type 
of  womanhood  itself.  At  first,  or  for  a  short  time, 
the  effect  will  not  be  so  remarkable,  but  in  five 
years,  and  still  more  impressively  in  twenty-five, 
it  will  be  showing  what  kind  of  power  is  in  it. 
And  if  still  it  should  go  on,  for  some  hundreds  of 
years,  as  it  is  of  course  expected  that  it  will,  it 
will  become  a  fact  organic  and  constituent  in  the 
race,  and  the  very  look  and  temperament  of  women 
will  be  altered.  The  word  woman  of  course  will 
remain  to  denote  the  female  sex  of  man,  but  the 
personal  habit  and  type  of  the  sex  will  be  no  more 
what  it  is.  The  look  will  be  sharp,  the  voice  will 
be  wiry  and  shrill,  the  action  will  be  angular  and 
abrupt,  wiliness,  self-asserting  boldness,  eagerness 
for  place  and  power  will  get  into  the  expression 
more  and  more  distinctly,  and  become  inbred  in 
the  native  habit.  Hitherto  we  have  been  calling 
the  female  sex  the  fair  sex,  and  that  word  fair 
represents,  in  bloom  and  beauty,  just  what  the  elect 


136  WOMEN'S  STJFFEAGE; 

virtues  of  womanhood — the  trust,  the  unselfishness, 
the  deep  kindliness,  the  ethereal  grace  and  cheer, 
the  facile  and  free-playing  inspirations  — call  for  as 
their  fit  expression.  Accordingly,  when  these 
softer  virtues  go  by,  giving  way  to  the  ambitions 
of  candidacy,  and  the  subtle  intrigues  of  party, 
they  will  carry  off  with  them  the  fair  colors,  the 
flushes  of  clean  sensibility,  and  the  delicate,  smooth 
lines  of  form  and  feature,  and  we  shall  have,  instead, 
a  race  of  forward,  selfish,  politician-women  coming 
out  in  their  resulting  type,  thin,  hungry-looking, 
cream-tartar  faces,  bearing  a  sharper  look  of  talent, 
yet  somehow  touched  with  blight  and  fallen  out 
of  luster.  If  it  could  be  expected,  that  as  they 
change  type  physiologically,  they  will  become 
taller  and  more  brawny,  and  get  bigger  hands  and 
feet,  and  a  heavier  weight  of  brain,  it  would  not 
be  so  much  -to  their  disadvantage,  and  perhaps 
there  will  be  some  little  approach  to  compensation 
in  this  way,  but  there  is  far  more  reason  to  fear 
that  the  fight  they  are  to  be  in,  being  a  fight 
against  nature,  will  make  them  at  the  same  time 
thinner,  sharp-featured,  lank  and  dry,  just  as  all 
disappointed,  over-instigated  natures  always  are. 

I  speak  thus  of  the  physiological  changes,  or 
changes  of  type,  that  are  going  to  be  wrought  in 
womanhood,  not  because  it  is  a  matter  of  principal 
concern  with  me,  that  women  should  keep  their 
beauty,  but  simply  that,  by  these  external,  phys- 
iological tokens,  I  may  raise  a  more  adequate 


THE   REFORM   AGAINST   NATURE.  137 

conception  of  the  immense  moral  transformation 
that  is  going  to  be  wrought  in  their  personal  tem- 
perament and  character.  Nevertheless,  it  is  a 
truth  most  deeply  grounded,  that  women  are 
bound,  in  God's  name,  to  save  their  beauty.  For 
this  is  the  honor  and  power  of  their  subject  state. 
Man  rules  by  the  precedence  of  quantity  and  self- 
asserting  energy,  and  woman  by  the  subject  sov- 
ereignty of  beauty,  personal  and  moral  together, 
which  she  can  little  aiford  to  lose  by  a  sally  to 
gain  the  noisier,  coarser  kind  that  does  not  belong 
to  her — which  also  she  will  as  certainly  fail  of,  as 
the  governing  of  men  she  is  after,  is  both  against 
their  nature  and  her  own. 

Be  this  as  it  may,  it  will  be  a  very  great  over- 
sight in  us  not  to  perceive  that  this  introduction 
of  women  to  an  active  part  in  political  affairs  will 
be  followed  by  an  immense  change  in  the  womanly 
habit  and  character,  and  a  change  about  equally 
undesirable  to  both  sexes.  The  new  possibility 
will  at  first  be  a  triumph  for  women,  and  will  seem 
to  be  the  dawn  of  a  higher  and  more  hopeful  state ; 
but  in  the  long  run  of  time  the  change  will  be  the 
running  down  of  womanhood  into  weakness  and 
contempt.  The  beautiful  prestige  now  held  will 
be  gone,  her  fatal  want  of  faculty  to  cope  with 
men  in  public  affairs  will  be  proved,  and  she  will 
be  irrevocably  battered  and  draggled  by  the  kind 
of  encounter  in  which  she  has  so  miserably  failed. 
And  it  will  be  a  failure  all  the  worse,  and  more 


138 

hopeless,  that  it  will  have  burnt  away  so  many 
fine  properties  and  lost  her  the  standing  she  had, 
by  God's  appointment,  in  her  nature  itself.  Her 
successes  will  be  short  and  partial,  and  when  the 
present  stock  of  gallantry  is  expended,  instead  of 
being  helped  and  put  forward  because  she  is  a 
woman,  she  will  rather  be  hindered,  because,  being 
a  woman,  she  can  be.  Coming  thus  to  the  end, 
where  favor  dies,  she  is  neither  the  elect  nor  the 
elected  lady  longer,  and  no  matter  what  her  worth 
may  be,  it  will  be  strange  if  she  does  not  suffer  a 
good  deal  of  moral  damage  in  her  collapse. 

The  active,  campaigning  work  of  political  life 
is  certainly  in  quite  too  high  a  key  for  the  delicate 
organization,  and  the  fearfully  excitable  suscepti- 
bilities of  women.  They  have  no  conception  now, 
as  they  look  on,  of  the  gustiness  and  high  tempest 
their  frail  skiffs  must  encounter.  The  struggle  is 
a  trial  even  for  men,  that  sometimes  quite  over- 
turns their  self-mastery,  and  totally  breaks  down 
the  strength  both  of  their  principles  and  their 
bodies.  And  yet  if  we  enlarge  the  contest,  as  we 
must,  when  we  bring  in  women,  it  will  be  mani- 
fold more  intense  than  now.  Hitherto  it  has  been 
an  advantage  to  be  going  into  battle  in  our  suf- 
frages with  a  full  half,  and  that  the  best  half  mor- 
ally, as  a  corps  of  reserve,  left  behind,  so  that  we 
may  fall  back  on  this  quiet  element  or  base, 
several  times  a  day,  and  always  at  night,  and  re- 
compose  our  courage  and  settle  again  our  mental 


THE   ET'FORM    AGAINST   NATURE.  loU 

and  moral  equilibrium.     Now  it  is  proposed  that 
we  have  no  reserve  any  longer,  that  we  go  into  our 
conflicts  taking  our  women  with  us,  all  to  be  kept 
heating  in  the  same  fire  for  weeks  or  months  to- 
gether, without  interspacings  of   rest,  or  ccoling 
times  of  composure.     We  are  to  be  as  much  more 
excited,  of  course,  in  this  new  dispensation  as  we 
can  be,  and  the  women  are  of  course  to  be  as  much 
more  excited  than  we,  as  they  are  more  excitable. 
Let  no  man  imagine,  as  we  see  to  be  the  way  of 
many,  that  our  women  are  going  into  these  en- 
counters to  be  just  as  quiet,  or  as  little  moved  as 
now,  when  they  stay  in  the  rear  unexcited,  let- 
ting us  come  back  to  them  often  and  recover  our 
reason.     They  are  no  more  mitigators  now,  but 
instigators  rather,  sweltering  in  the  same  fierce 
heats  and  commotions,  only  more  tempestuously 
stirred  than  we.     What  we  take  by  first  hand  im- 
pulse they  take  by  exaggeration.    And  according- 
ly, it  will  be  seen  that,  where  we  are  simply  at  red 
heat,  they  are  at  white;  that  where  we  deprecate, 
they  hate  ;  that  where  we  touch  the  limits  of  rea- 
son, they  touch  the  limits  of  excess ;  that  where 
we  are  impetuous  in  a  cause,  they  are  uncontrol- 
able  in  it.   "We  knew  how  as  men  to  be  moderated 
in  part,  by  self-moderation,  even  as  ships,  by  their 
helms,  in  all  great  storms  at  sea ;   for  the  other 
part,  we  had  women  kept  in  moderation  by  their 
element,  even  as  ships  in  harbor  lie  swinging  by 
their  anchors ;  but  now,  we  get  even  less  of  help 


140 

from  these  than  they  do  from  us.     I  do  not  mean 
by  this  that  women  do  not  show  as  brave  self- 
keeping  often  as  men,  but  that  going  more  by 
feeling  than  men,  they  feel  every  thing  more  in- 
tensely, and  with  more  liabilities  to  excess.     They 
make  more  of  their  idols,  too,  than  men  do,  raise 
more  false  halos  about  them,  and  even  have  it  as  a 
kind  of  virtue  to  bear  defeat  badly  in  their  cause. 
Hard  pushed  by  adversaries,  they  almost  certainly 
count  them  personal  enemies.     It  is  not  that  some 
hysterical,  over-delicate  women  are  prone  to  such 
exaggerations  of  sensibility,   but   that,  like   our 
southern  women,  or  the   tough  city  mothers  of 
Sparta,  they  too  commonly  allow  their. passions 
to  get  heated,  and  call  it  their  righteous  sentiment. 
To  conceive  our  whole  popular  mass,  both  male 
and  female,  seething,  at  once,  in  the  same  vortex 
of  party  commotion — ten  women  taking  hold  of  one 
man  to  at  once  possess  and  dispossess  him  in  their 
higher  key  of  excitement — is  no  pleasant  thing 
to  contemplate.     But  the  specially  sad  thing  of  it 
is,  not  that  men  will  be  heated  and  put  to  a  strain 
and  made  coarse,  possibly  violent,  but  that  women 
will  be.     Men  are  made  to  be  coarse  after  a  cer- 
tain masculine  fashion,  but  there  is  no  such  mas- 
culine fashion  for  women.     But  whether  there  be 
or  not,  fifty  years  in  such  kind  of  training  will 
even  transform  the  Womanly  temperament.     Will 
it  not,    as   certainly   and   more   deplorably,    the 
womanly  face  and  expression  ? 


THE    KEFORM    AGAINST   NATURE. 

How  far  these  heats  of  partisanship  will  go  in 
dissolving  ultimately  the  bonds  of  delicacy  and 
the  proprieties  of  good  manners,  it  may  not  be  easy 
to  say,  but  it  is  at  least  impossible  that  the  moral- 
ities should  keep  their  present  footing.  It  is  part 
of  the  reform,  that  women  are  to  be  candidates 
themselves  perhaps  equally  with  men,  and  so 
many,  with  their  special  friends  and  allies,  will  of 
course  be  thrown  upon  waves  of  excitement  and 
put  to  a  strain  of  principle  intensely  severe.  And 
if  men,  as  we  hear,  will  sell  every  thing  at  the  polls 
for  success,  it  is  not  to  be  doubted  that  women  will 
show  like  mortal  infirmities.  Coming  out  of  their 
now  vestal  retirement  to  make  friends  and  political 
capital,  we  shall  hear  what  kind  of  bargains  this 
or  that  woman  is  arranging,  and  how  she  manages 
what  is  called  the  "  dirty  work"  of  her  canvass., 
They  must  come  of  course  to  this,  else  how  can 
they  get  on  ?  If  they  take  the  stump,  woman 
against  woman,  or  woman  against  man,  it  will 
only  be  a  much  better  figure  to  be  in,  than  the 
button-holing  and  private  colloding  with  gentle- 
men, going  on  so  often  in  back  rooms  and  by-pla- 
ces. Or  if  we  say  nothing  of  the  perils  of  candi- 
dacy, and  only  speak  of  the  vote,  women  as  a  gen- 
eral thing  do  not  make  good  partisans.  They  over 
feel,  over-contrive,  over-do,  and  in  this  manner 
weaken  morally  themselves  and  their  cause.  It 
masters  them  so  totally  that  both  it  and  they  ap- 
pear badly.  They  let  in  also  little  malignancies 


142 

that  are  poisonous,  and  get  their  motive  so  twist- 
ed in  with  their  dislikes  and  animosities,  that 
they  are  a  great  way  further  off  -from  the  integ- 
rities of  their  cause  than  they  know  themselves. 
They  become  viragos  in  this  manner  when  they 
think  they  are  only  doing  all  in  righteous  vehe- 
mence. 

We  also  know  that  women  often  show  a  strange 
facility  of  debasement  and  moral  abandonment, 
when  they  have  once  given  way  consentingly  to 
wrong.  Men  go  down  by  a  descent— -facilis  de- 
scensus — women,  by  a  precipitation.  Perhaps  the 
reason  is,  in  part,  that  more  is  expected  of  women 
and  that  again  because  there  is  more  expectancy  of 
truth  and  sacrifice  in  the  semi-christly,  subject  state 
of  women  than  is  likely  to  be  looked  for  in  the 
forward,  self-asserting  headship  of  men.  Be  it  as 
it  may,  the  simple  fact  that  more  is  expected  of 
women,  whether  more  should  be  or  not,  shows  that 
when  they  do  wrong,  they  have  more  to  face,  on 
which  account  they  fall  as  much  faster  and  lower. 
It  must  therefore  be  expected,  when  this  reform 
against  nature  is  carried,  that  we  shall  have  a  great 
deal  more  of  a  great  deal  worse  corruption  in  our 
public  affairs,  than  we  have  now.  And  the  op- 
posite confidence  many  boast  is  far  more  nearly 
preposterous  than  it  need  be.  If  we  could  take 
our  present  women  at  their  present  point  of  beauty 
or  of  unsophisticated  good,  and  bring  them  di- 
rectly into  political  life  with  us,  having  corps  of 


THE   KEFOKM   AGAINST   NATUKE. 

angels  in  company,  to  salt  them  and  keep  them 
in  their  present  state  of  disinterested  good,  they 
would  give  us  prime  benefit  doubtless,  by  their  aid. 
But  the  difficulty  is,  that  angels  have  other  work 
to  do,  and  that  we  have  no  salt  strong  enough  for 
that  kind  of  keeping — the  women  will  change  ;  not 
immediately,  but  after  a  time,  such  as  will  permit 
the  corrupting  causes  to  do  their  work,  becoming 
finally  exactly  what  they  now  are  not.  Make  no 
doubt  of  it,  women  are  venal  as  truly  as  men  ;  a 
great  deal  more  easily  preyed  upon  by  art  and 
cheated  by  stratagem.  As  they  sooner  believe  they 
are  sooner  made  a  prey  of.  And  they  will  only 
suffer  the  more  from  the  art,  the  stratagem,  the 
prey,  that  they  go  to  the  practice  of  it  themselves 
and  get  the  fair,  sweet  motives  of  their  womanhood 
mixed  up  with  so  many  obliquities.  As  certainly 
as  women  are  human,  and  none  of  us  have  any 
doubt  of  that,  they  will  take  in  the  political  cor- 
ruptions with  a  prone-minded  human  facility.  Nor 
is  it  any  fit  answer  to  say,  that  they  have  as  good 
right  as  men  to  be  in  such  corruptions,  provided 
they  are  not  in  worse.  They  will  be  in  worse ;  a 
woman  can  not  be  as  bad  as  a  man  in  any  thing, 
without  being  worse ;  for  a  selfish,  plotting,  in- 
triguing, political,  make-shift  woman  has  a  great 
deal  more  of  the  fine  fair  stuff  to  mar  and  muddle 
in  becoming  what  she  is,  than  a  man  will  have. 
And  then  again,  when  the  two  are  nearly  at  the 
same  level  of  baseness  and  trickery,  the  man  will 


144 

have  a  firmer  will  and  keep  his  self-retention 
evenly  enough  to  almost  make  it  seem  a  kind  of 
virtue ;  whereas  often  the  partridge-like  fuss  and 
commotion,  by  which  a  woman  clucks  down  her 
brood  of  stratagems,  makes  her  art  more  visible 
and  artful,  and  she  is  just  so  much  the  more  cor- 
rupted by  it.  True,  it  is  pretense  or  smooth  dis- 
guise in  both  cases.  Hence  also  it  is  that  we  so 
often  hear  of  slimy  men  ;  God  grant  that  we  may 
not  be  obliged  to  hear  as  much  more  still  of  slimy 
women. 

But  we  shall  better  understand  what  we  are 
discussing,  if  we  look  a  little  farther  in  upon  the 
political  machinery,  and  see  how  it  works  in 
preparing  and  executing  the  operation  of  the  suf- 
frage. The  great,  the  almost  insuperable  difficulty 
encountered  now  in  our  scheme  of  suffrage,  is  that 
the  primary  assemblies,  those  which  select  and  set 
up  the  candidates,  are  so  generally  filled  up,  in 
the  large  cities  and  towns,  by  a  rush  of  all  the 
worst,  most  abandoned,  most  violent  characters. 
Good  men,  men  of  respect  and  order  can  do  noth- 
ing there,  they  are  wholly  out  of  place.  The 
mob — for  it  is  the  mob  only  that  has  the  tempest 
in  hand — hears  no  reason,  bawls,  stamps,  raves, 
roars,  and  pitches  into  fisticuffs,  getting  first  the 
organization  by  getting  all  decencies  under,  and 
then  the  business  goes  on.  And  if  you  ask  who 
will  be  nominated,  why  exactly  they  undoubtedly 


THE  REFORM  AGAINST  NATURE. 

who  bought,  or  some  way  made  friends  of  the  mob 
before  they  came  together. 

But  there  is  to  come  in  now,  as  we  propose,  an- 
other element,  viz.,  women  ;  and  there  will  be 
women  who  expect  to  be  candidates.  And  how  ? 
Of  course  they  must  buy,  or  somehow  make  court 
to  their  mob  also.  They  can  have  one  too,  if  they 
will,  as  noisy,  and  base,  and  violent,  though  made 
up  of  women,  as  any  worst  and  wildest  crew  of 
men.  Matters  will  come  along  then  somewhat  in 
this  way — certain  managing  men  will  manage 
certain  managing  women,  and  a  few  of  these  man- 
aging women  can  empty  whole  streets  of  women 
into  any  primary  assembly,  and  have  them  take 
their  part  as  warmly  as  can  be  desired. 
'  Possibly  it  will  come  out  as  the  result  in  a  way 
of  concession  to  the  respectables,  that  a  candidate 
or  two,  male  or  female,  is  put  up  who  has  a 
tolerable  show  of  character  ;  and  besides  that  a 
much  larger  number  have  the  kind  of  character, 
better  called  no  character,  which  made  them  fa- 
vorites and  leaders  of  their  mob.  At  the  head  of 
the  whole  operation,  as  the  ticket  now  goes  to  the 
polls,  there  is  probably  some  master  demagogue, 
having  two  or  three  subordinates  that  manipulate 
the  process  with  him,  and  they  make  their  head- 
quarters, privately  of  course,  at  some  palace  of 
vice,  where  some  gilded  woman  undertakes  with 
them  to  farm  the  managing  women  subordinate, 
and  they  to  bring  out  and  lead  their  general  crew. 
7 


146  WOMEN'S  SUFFEAGE  ; 

The  woman,  or  women  of  character  on  the  ticket 
have  the  gilded  woman  aforesaid  not  unlikely 
with  them  on  the  same,  and  a  good  many  others, 
all  no  better  than  they  should  be,  and  they  run 
all  together  for  Congress,  or  the  General  Assembly, 
or  the  Common  Council.  The  better  candidates 
must  not  stick  at  their  company  of  course,  or  any 
way  bolt  the  ticket.  And  then,  when  the  voting 
women  come  to  the  ballot,  they  must  think  it 
sufficient  that  there  is  some  worthy  character  on 
the  ticket ;  and  if  they  suifer  it  to  be  suspected 
that  they  will  not  vote  the  unworthy,  they  must 
expect  to  be  dogged  by  the  argument  of  damage 
and  destruction  to  the  party,  and  must  learn,  if 
possible,  to  swallow  their  scruples,  and  vote  the 
reigning  harlot  and  the  reigning  philanthropist 
or  true  woman  together. 

Now,  it  will  seem  quite  improbable,  I  suppose, 
to  the  inexperienced,  that  any  so  revolting  contin- 
gencies are  likely  to  arise.  Better  far,  to  ask, 
How  it  is  possible  for  them  not  to  arise  ?  The 
scenes  and  occasions  described  answer  exactly  to 
what  occurs  every  year,  in  the  large  towns  and 
great  cities,  where  .the  male  suffrage  is  called  for, 
and  it  is  understood  by  everybody  that  the  hell  of 
a  nominating  assembly  is  the  worst  hell  above 
ground,  anywhere  to  be  seen.  And  do  you  ask, 
"What  shall  make  it  more  certainly  better,  than 
that  a  full  half  of  the  assembly  is  to  be  made  up 
of  women  ?  Are  there  no  bad  women,  then  I  And 


THE   KEFOKM   AGAINST   NATURE.  147 

where  will  they  go  to  be  more  at  home  and  be- 
have worse,  than  amid  the  uproar  and  tumult  of 
BO  many  wild  and  brutal  men  ? 

It  sounds  very  pleasantly,  doubtless,  when  some 
talented,  high  woman,  is  spoken  of  as  put  up,  on 
her  quiet  merit,  for  the  vote  of  the  people.  But 
that  is  pure  hallucination.  ISTo  such  thing  is  pos- 
sible. She  must  get  the  nomination,  strong  enough 
to  carry  her  in,  within  the  party  lines ;  and  if  any 
one  imagines  that  she  can  go  into  the  primary 
assemblies,  and  be  heard  there  among  the  gods  of 
the  abyss,  they  have  only  to  put  her  on  trying  it, 
to  find  out  how  utterly  absurd  any  such  thing 
may  be.  In  such  a  city  as  Hartford,  for  exam- 
ple, it  will  be  found,  within  a  ten-years'  time  after 
this  reform  is  passed,  that  the  nominations  will  be 
half  determined  by  just  this  woman  element,  and 
that  no  true  woman  has  any  least  chance  of  a 
nomination,  save  as  somebody  engineers  for  it,  and 
is  pitched  into  the  lions'  den  to  obtain  it.  And 
then  most  likely  the  fair  candidate  will  find  her- 
self on  a  ticket  with  names  that  put  her  in  a  class 
with  dishonor  itself.  Still,  if  she  is  going  to  be  a 
politician,  she  must  not  be  delicate  about  her  asso- 
ciations ! 

But  we  must  go  to  the  scene  of  the  ballot  itself, 
and  see  what  is  likely  to  be  seen  there.  We  some- 
times hear  it  proposed  that  the  women  shall  have 
boxes  provided  for  their  particular  vote,  in  some 
quiet  place  by  themselves,  and  it  seems  to  be  im- 


148  WOMEN'S  STJFFEAGE  ; 

agined  that  they  will  go  there  as  to  a  pic-nic,  or  a 
sewing-circle.     One   of   our    literary   gentlemen, 
too,  has  this  matter  of  women's  suffrage,  I  per- 
ceive, in  so  light  a  key,  that  he  compares  the  bal- 
lot-box to  a  post-office  box,  and  thinks  it  a  ques- 
tion of  as  little  concern  what  one  will  do  for  a 
woman  as  the  other.     Exactly  contrary  to  this,  I 
am  ready  to  predict  that  the  woman's  box,  within 
a  very  few  years,  will  become  worse  and  more  un- 
manageable than  the  man's.     The  crew  that  are 
gathered  around  it  will  be  more  disorderly,  and 
less  respectful  of  decency ;  and  partly  so  for  the 
reason,  that  they  have  so  much  larger  opportunities 
of  frauds.      I   make   nothing   here  of  what   has 
been  reported  as  regards  the  fraud  of  the  voting 
women  at  the  polls  in  New  Jersey,  the  fine  oppor- 
tunity for  which  was   so   very  soon   discovered. 
Any  one  can  see  for  himself,  that  the  dress  of 
women  is  of  a  kind  to  permit  of  infinite  disguises, 
and  such,  too,  as  forbid  even  a  possibility  of  detec- 
tion.    The  whole  crew  of  unprincipled  women  can 
be  brought  on  thus,  six  or  eight  times  over,  at  any 
election,  having  only  changes  of  dress  provided 
for  the  personation  of  as  many  characters.     And 
the  man -poll,  bad  as  it  is,  will  be  honesty  itself,  in 
comparison.     Other  modes  of  demoralization  will 
also  be  discovered,  especially  in  the  country  and 
the  more  sparsely  settled  parts,  where  men  and 
women  will  be  piled  in  huge  wagons  to  be  car- 
ried to  the  polls,  and  will  sometimes,  on  their  re- 


THE  REFORM  AGAINST  NATURE.       149 

turn,  encounter  a  storm  that  drives  them  into  way- 
side taverns  and  other  like  places,  for  the  night ; 
where,  of  course,  they  must  have  a  good  time  some- 
how, probably  in  some  kind  of  general  carouse 
that  will  comfort  their  defeat,  or  celebrate  their 
victory.  Finally,  the  next  day  the  women  voters 
are  put  down  at  home — with  some  things  to  regret, 
which  are  only  worse  if  not  regretted.  Indeed, 
this  herdingjpf  the  two  sexes  together  in  political 
action  involves  """nCTlmail /danger^oTa  frequen  t 
djm&Tng  together,  in  the  lower  tiers  of  society, 
than  which  almost  nothing  could  have  a  more 
disastrous  effect. 

We  must  also  follow  this  matter  still  farther  in 
another  direction.  This  conjunction  of  the  sexes 
in  political  life  makes  it  almost  a  matter  of  course 
that  an  immense  lobby  of  fair  women  should  be 
gathered  about  the  halls  of  Congress  and  the 
State  legislatures,  there  to  manipulate  causes,  and 
measures,  and  men,  as  they  will  know  how,  shield- 
ed by  their  own  numbers  and  the  public  gloss  of 
a  conjoined  action  of  the  two  sexes.  All  these 
great  bodies  of  legislation  will  become,  in  this 
manner,  as  many  courts  of  the  Bourbons,  and  the 
general  game  will  be  to  settle  what  women  are  to 
have  the  patronages,  keep  the  treasury  keys,  and 
do  the  public  fleecing  of  the  people.  And  if  any 
one  imagines  that  the  representative  women  inside 
of  these  great  bodies,  Congress  for  example,  will  be 
acting  correctively,  as  a  counter-check  to  such 


150 

corruptions  outside,  it  is  certainly  a  comfort  most 
welcome  to  hope  as  much,  if  we  may.  I  wish  we 
could  be  more  sure  of  it.  First  of  all,  the  women 
that  are  inside  have  a  considerable  chance  of 
being  no  better  than  the  women  outside;  and 
then,  if  they  are,  it  does  not  clearly  appear  in  what 
matter  they  are  likely  to  exert  much  power.  For 
a  time  they  will  be  treated  with  consideration^ 
because  they  are  women,  and  when  that  kind  of 
delicacy  is  worn  off,  and  they  are  left  to  take 
their  equal  chance  with  men,  as  their  great  reform 
itself  proposes,  they  will  find  that  getting  the  floor 
and  holding  it  in  that  bear-garden,  is  about  as 
nearly  impossible  as  it  can  be.  At  the  end  of 
twenty  years  no  living  woman  can  do  it.  She 
must  not  over-strain  her  treble,  if  she  does,  there 
will  be  laughter.  If  she  shakes  herself  in  great 
resolve,  puts  on  force,  grows  immensely  emphatic, 
denounces,  satirises,  as  a  man  might  do,  with  not 
a  whit  more  talent  and  even  conquering  applause 
and  a  place  by  it,  if  perchance  she  takes  on  but  a 
very  faint  show  of  the  vixenish  manner,  that  will 
be  the  end  of  her.  The  truth  is,  jha^jwoHoejo^aj^ 
not  made  to  govern  men  ;  as  will  here,  if  not 
sooner,  be  discovered.  And  when  the  woman 
power  has  given  out  thus  in  the  Congress,  and  the 
discouraged  representatives  are  finally  discontin- 
ued, the  moral  collapse  of  the  reform  will  be  sadly 
evident.  And  the  specially  sad  thing  of  all  will 
be,  that  a  catastrophe  so  conspicuous  and  so  boldly 


THE  REFORM  AGAINST  NATURE.       151 

challenged,  will  let  down,  far  too  low,  the  just 
respect  of  woman.  That  respect  can  be,  and  is  in 
fact  now  being,  raised,  if  we  let  the  suffrage  ques- 
tion pass ;  when,  if  we  go  on  to  put  her  on  that 
test,  we  simply  break  the  neck  of  all  her  possibil- 
ity across  it.  Her  true  good  and  glory  do  not  lie 
in  being  a  man  with  men,  but  in  being  more  com- 
pletely and  sufficiently  woman.  Would  that  we 
could  simply  see,  for  one  single  century,  what 
powers  of  industry,  and  thought,  and  art,  and 
beauty,  and  immortal  insight,  can  be  unfolded  in  a 
full  round  culture  of  woman ;  that  I  am  quite  sure 
would  effectually  raise  her  condition,  and  put  her 
in  a  scale  of  honor,  where  all  mere  place  and  office 
would  seem  to  be  in  a  lower  plane. 

I  ought  perhaps  in  fairness,  to  suggest,  that  a 
reconstruction  of  our  government  is  conceivable, 
that  would  obviate  some  of  the  mischiefs  here  re- 
ferred to.  If  there  were  a  second  or  third  house, 
called  the  House  of  Women,  interposed  between 
our  Senate  and  Representative  chambers,  in  such 
a  way  that  any  measure  could  originate  in  either, 
and  every  measure  must  pass  the  vote  of  the  three, 
this  would  give  full  opportunity  to  the  women  to 
look  after  their  own  affairs,  and  after  all  fit  legis- 
lations by  which  they  may  best  advance  their  con- 
dition. But  this  would  give  them  a  legislative 
power,  when  it  really  does  not  belong,  as  we  have 
seen,  to  their  womanly  nature  to  govern,  and  would 
also  give  them  a  practical  veto  over  all  the  govern- 


152 

ing  rights  of  men.  Whether  this  would  satisfy 
is  doubtful  also  ;  and  if  it  would,  the  immense  and 
really  frightful  difficulty  of  the  primary  assem- 
blies still  remains,  and  I  see  not  how  it  can  be 
obviated. 

4 

But  there  is  a  very  deep,  not  improbable  con- 
nection between  this  matter  of  women's  suffrage 
and  the  family  state,  where  it  is  likely  to  have 
a  dangerously  demoralizing  power.  I  have  pur- 
posely abstained  in  this  discussion  from  any  par- 
ticular notice  of  the  physiological  subtractions  that 
so  largely  disqualify  women  for  an  active  and 
forward  part  in  political  affairs.  I  have  not  in- 
sisted on  the  inequalities  of  their  temperaments, 
or  the  incapacities  to  which  they  are  subject,  or 
the  mischiefs  that  may  come  upon  children  through 
an  ante-natal  and  post-natal  nurture  of  two  whole 
years  and  more,  disturbed  in  all  that  time  by 
states  of  political  excitement.  Passing  all  these, 
and  a  hundred  matters  of  the  kind,  I  will  simply 
refer  to  some  of  the  reasons  we  have  for  appre- 
hending a  relaxation  of  the  just  bonds  of  marriage, 
and  a  greatly  increased  tendency,  first  to  avoid 
marriage,  and  secondly  to  obtain  divorce.  It  is 
even  remarkable  that  the  very  point  of  departure 
in  the  women's  suffrage  argument  reduces  mar- 
riage to  a  mere  partnership  contract.  Thus  it  is 
denied  a  hundred  times  a  day  in  these  discussions, 
that  there  is  "  any  more  reason  why  the  woman 


THE  EEFOEM  AGAINST  NATURE.       153 

should  take  her  husband's  name  in  marriage  than 
why  he  should  take  hers."  All  which  goes  on  the 
principle  that  the  two  are,  in  every  sense,  equal ; 
that  the  woman  is  just  as  much  head  of  the  man 
as  the  man  of  the  woman  ;  that  he  is  given  as  truly 
to  be  her  helpmate  as  she  to  be  his,  and  that  all 
the  physiological  distinctions  we  see  with  our  eyes, 
which  exactly  declare  the  scripture  doctrine  over 
again,  are  insignificant  and  of  no  account.  The 
two  therefore  come  together  not  to  be  one,  a  total 
nature,  which  is  marriage,  but  to  be  two  in  equal 
contract,  which  is  partnership.  Of  course  the 
partnership  contract  may  be  terminated,  as  all 
other  contracts  may,  by  the  parties  themselves.  It 
is  no  quasi  sacrament,  no  mystic  bond  of  God  that 
puts  the  parties  in  their  places  and  parts,  one  to 
be  responsible  for  the  forwarding  and  outside  pro- 
visioning of  their  lot,  the  other  to  be  retired  and 
subject  inside  for  the  comforting,  and  right  keep- 
ing, and  due  ornament  and  order  of  life.  All  this 
goes  by  under  the  remorseless  ditto  of  an  equality 
never  beheld  in  the  world,  and  which,  dropping 
revelation  out  of  sight,  is  the  poorest  conceivable 
fiction.  Is  there  any  thing  more  visible  than  that 
here  are  two  kinds,  say  what  we  will  of  the  equali- 
ties? Is  there  not  a  man  and  woman,  and  are 
not  the  two  a  complete  one  ?  And  is  not  the  man 
as  visibly  head  of  that  oneness  as  any  head  set 
upon  two  shoulders  was  ever  head  of  the  body  ? 
Partnerships  have  no  head  in  this  way,  because 
1* 


154:  WOMEN'S  SUFFEAGE  ; 

the  ditto  principle  exactly  levels  the  parties.  Mar- 
riage has  and  is  to  have,  must  have,  a  head,  and  a 
connecting  bond  that  runs  down  through,  else  it  is 
a  thing  gone  by. 

And  here  is  the  melancholy  fact,  as  regards 
this  boasted  reform,  that  it  loosens  every  joint  of 
the  family  state,  and  is  really  meant  to  do  it,  as 
we  plainly  see  by  many  of  the  appeals  set  forth. 
Thus  a  leading  woman  apostle  of  this  reform 
gives  out  for  her  declared  sentiment,  that  "  true 
marriage,  like  true  religion,  dwells  in  the  sanctuary 
of  the  soul,  beyond  the  cognizance  or  sanction  of 
state  or  church  •  "  ridicules  the  notion  that  a  man's 
wife  "  is  his  property  if  once  married,  no  matter 
whether  her  affections  are  his  or  another's ;"  laughs 
at  his  indignations,  "  if  any  one  else  has  dared  to 
call  out  what  he  never  could  ;"  and  finally,  as  if  to 
stir  up  discontent  with  marriage,  in  a  way  of  en- 
listing the  discontented  in  her  cause,  exclaims — 
"  Oh,  what  a  sham  is  the  marriage  we  see  about  us, 
though  sanctioned  in  our  courts,  and  baptized  at 
our  altars,  where  cunning  priests  take  toll  for  bind- 
ing virtue  with  vice,  angels  of  grace  and  good- 
ness with  devils  in  malice  and  malignity  ;  beauty 
with  deformity,  joyous  youth  with  gilded  old  age 
— palsied,  blasted,  with  nothing  to  give  its  victim 
in  white  veil  and  orange  blossoms  but  a  state  of 
luxury  and  sensualism."  Whether  these  citations 
are  meant  to  be  as  shocking  as  they  certainly  are, 
I  do  not  know,  and  it  is  of  no  great  importance  to 


THE  REFORM  AGAINST  NATURE.        155 

inquire.  Enough  to  see  what  kind  of  animus 
struggles  in  the  utterance,  and  that  marriage  is 
gone  down  forever  in  the  argument  and  reform, 
that  are  working  their  way  by  appeals  so  revolt- 
ing. Nobody  can  talk  in  this  way  of  marriage, 
who  would  not  head  a  general  coming  out  of  it, 
and  is  not  ready  to  offer  that  kind  of  leader- 
ship. 

Any  one  can  see  that  a  reform  thus  carried, 
carries  with  it  discontent  with  marriage,  and  to 
just  the  same  extent  insures  a  legislation  to  facil- 
itate divorce.  Nobody  is  to  blame,  in  this  kind  of 
casuistry,  for  the  bad  marriages,  but  the  priests 
and  the  laws,  and  the  woman  party  has  a  right  of 
course  to  be  quit,  as  soon  as  new  passions  rise  to 
ask  it,  or  the  old  ones  die  to  make  it  a  riddance. 
Being  perfectly  equal,  and  put  upon  her  equality 
with  her  husband  for  the  right  to  vote,  she  must 
prove  her  equality  somehow,  when  she  comes  to 
the  voting  and  how  shall  she  do  it,  but  by  assert- 
ing her  independence  in  a  vote  upon  the  other  side  ? 
Such  contrary  vote  need  not  do  any  fatal  harm,  it 
is  true,  and  yet  there  is  a  loosening  touch  in  it,  so 
that  if  some  feeling  of  hurt  has  been  stirred  by 
hot  passages  of  debate  before,  or  may  be  afterward, 
there  is  a  considerable  beginning  of  divorce  in  it. 
No  wise  scheme  of  polity  will  consentingly  multi- 
ply such  occasions  of  damage,  in  a  relation  at 
once  so  sacred  and  so  delicate.  Besides,  where  the 
two  parties  in  marriage  are  known  to  be  opposite 


156 

in  their  party  affinities,  there  will  be  private  colle- 
ctings sought,  that  will  greatly  expose  the  frailty 
of  the  woman,  and  as  greatly  tempt  the  jealousy 
of  the  man.  Sometimes  when  the  husband  is  up 
as  a  candidate,  an  opposing  party,  who  are  willing 
to  see  mischief,  will  set  up  his  wife  against  him, 
and  whether  she  consents  or  not,  will  run  her  into 
the  major  vote,  on  purpose  to  put  him  in  derision. 
Sometimes  a  wife  in  bad  blood  will  get  herself 
nominated  against  her  husband,  for  the  purpose 
of  bringing  him  under  contempt  arid  preparing  the 
divorce  she  wants. 

The  general  scheme  of  women's  suffrage  works 
against  marriage,  as  we  thus  perceive,  to  make  it 
less  sacred  and  less  permanent  and  just  as  much 
less  beneficial.  Frequent  divorces  check  the  rate 
of  populations,  as  the  Romans  found  to  their  cost. 
Frequent  divorces  are  the  bane  of  all  family  peace 
and  order  before  they  come,  and  the  extinction  of 
all  true  family  life  and  nurture  after  they  come. 
Hapless  beings,  too,  are  the  children,  that  being 
heirs  just  now  to  a  parentage  and  a  home,  are  only 
heirs  henceforth  to  a  family  quarrel.  Now  the 
dear  feeling  they  had  of  their  parentage  is  suc- 
ceeded by  the  only  question  left,  viz. :  Who  was  to 
blame  ?  which  if  they  can  settle  it  brings  no  com- 
fort, and  which,  if  they  can  not,  brings  scarcely 
less.  Sad  and  decadent  is  the  history  of  any  peo- 
ple who  have  forgotten  how  to  sanctify  marriage, 
and  whose  children  go  to  the  records  of  divorce 


THE   EEFOEM   AGAINST   NATUKE.  157 

instead  of  the  records  of  marriage,  to  find  their 
fathers  and  mothers. 

I  spoke  in  my  preliminary  chapter  of  the  very 
galling  and  terrible  hardships  falling  on  woman, 
by  reason  of  the  scanty  prices  paid  for  her  labor. 
JSTo  friend  who  desires  to  improve  her  condition, 
or  take  off  the  real  oppressions  under  which  she 
is  crushed,  will  be  in  a  mood,  as  it  seems  to  me,  to 
reject  almost  any  kind  of  reform  that  promises  the 
needed  relief.  Perhaps  we  are  able  now  to  see  a 
little  more  distinctly  what  kind  of  help  will  do  it, 
and  what  will  not.  The  women's  suffrage  reform 
will  not,  of  course,  make  employers  less  greedy,  or 
workers  more  capable,  or  work  more  abundant. 
Or,  if  the  transference  of  a  few  women  to  public 
offices  and  functions  would  bring  a  very  little  re- 
lief, that  same  relief  can  be  quite  as  easily  secured, 
under  the  present  mode  of  government,  without 
any  change.  It  is  being  largely  secured  now,  and 
is  regarded  by  the  whole  people  only  with  favor. 
A  very  great  work  may  be  done  to  raise  the  prices 
of  female  industry  by  advancing,  in  every  way 
possible,  the  education  of  women,  and  so  their  ca- 
pacity of  more,  and  better,  and  more  various  kinds 
of  work.  Also,  by  efforts,  public  and  private,  to 
conserve  the  morality  of  husbands  and  fathers,  and 
save  their  hapless  families  from  being  precipitated, 
in  such  multitude,  upon  the  labor  market,  to  ob- 
tain their  pittance  of  bread ;  also,  by  endeavors  to 
encourage  and  promote  early  marriages  among  in- 


158 

dustrious  and  virtuous  young  people  in  humble 
life — but  so  far,  nothing  is  wanted  plainly  of  the 
great  reform  we  are  now  proposing,  and  it  does 
not  appear  that  any  thing  good  will  come  of  it.  If 
it  is  expected  that  women  going  into  the  legisla- 
tures will  enact  a  new  tariff  of  prices  for  women's 
labor,  that  is  one  of  the  things  which  no  monarch 
or  assembly  of  men  was  ever  able  to  do,  and  it  is 
not  likely  that  women  will  do  it.  If  it  could  be 
made  to  appear  that  women,  going  into  conditions 
of  public  office  and  power,  would  obtain  consid- 
eration, and  a  just  weight  of  character  for  the  sex, 
that  would  undoubtedly  do  something  for  the  cur- 
rent prices  of  woman's  labor  ;  for  the  higher  place 
of  public  estimation  they  hold,  the  more  highly 
rated,  or  appreciated  will  their  service  be.  And, 
probably,  a  good  deal  more  can  be  done,  in  this 
way,  than  has  been  hitherto,  by  putting  women 
in  offices  that  involve  no  governing  right — post- 
offices  and  clerkships,  for  example — and  this  can 
be  done  as  well  without  the  right  of  vote,  and  the 
right  of  rule,  as  with.  But  why  not,  011  the  same 
principle,  give  them  a  right  to  vote,  and  a  right  to 
rule  also.  Will  not  that  also  raise  our  impressions 
of  their  capacity  and  value  ?  I  think  not.  On 
the  contrary,  it  is  my  fixed  belief  that,  as  woman 
is  not  set  for  the  government  of  men  by  nature, 
the  whole  reform,  taken  in  the  long  run  of  time, 
will  do  the  very  utmost  possible  to  break  down 
the  honor  of  women,  and  put  them  at  a  lower 


THE    REFORM   AGAINST   NATURE.  159 

standing  than  now.  The  very  thing  preparing  is 
a  grand  mortal  failure,  under  which  the  sex  will 
be  a  great  deal  more  depressed  and  discouraged, 
than  it  would  under  any  worst  persecution.  Gov- 
erning women,  rely  upon  it,  are  never  going  to  be 
in  fashion.  There  is  a  sentence  against  it,  written 
so  deep  down  in  nature,  that  not  all  women  and 
all  men  together  can  take  it  finally  away. 

Any  hope,  therefore,  of  raising  woman's  lot 
and  woman's  prices,  by  putting  this  dower  of  au- 
thority upon  her,  will  assuredly  result  in  a  terrible 
reaction,  that  will  pitch  her  down  a  gulf  which, 
as  far  as  we  can  see,  admits  no  lift  of  recovery. 
The  tracks  going  hither  turn  all  one  way,  and  I 
see  not  now  how  they  can  ever  be  reversed.  Bro- 
ken down  by  such  a  failure,  prices  and  respect 
and  many  other  things  go  down,  and  no  counter- 
vailing possibility  of  reform  is  left. 

I  can  not  close  this  computation  of  the  effects 
of  women's  suffrage  without  noting  also  the  im- 
mense loss  of  sentiment  and  character  that  will 
result  from  it.  It  will  be  a  greater  loss  to  us  of 
the  male  sex  than  we  can  now  realize,  or  even  dis- 
tinctly imagine.  Our  advocates  of  women's  suf- 
frage, Mr.  Beecher  among  them,  have  much  to 
say,  and  certainly  not  too  much  of  the  "moral 
refinement,"  and  culture  of  men  by  "the  co-ordi- 
nate influence  of  woman."  But  it  is  not  observed, 
as  it  should  be,  that  the  power  we  thus  get  on  our 


160  WOMEN'S  SUFFRAGE; 

masculine  character  is  not  so  much  from  what 
women  do  to  us,  as  from  what  we  do  to  them. 
They  do  much  upon  us,  it  is  true,  by  their  gentle 
and  fine  qualities,  and  the  close  association  by 
which  they  get  a  kind  of  inhabitation  in  us  for 
their  own  more  delicate  spirit;  and  yet  the  main 
thing  with  us,  the  grand  civilizing  efficacy  consists 
in  a  principal  degree,  in  what  we  are  doing  to 
them,  the  courtesies  we  practice  and  the  homages 
we  spontaneously  pay.  We  are  taken  clean  by 
our  masculine  selfishness  here,  to  pay  a  tribute  as 
it  were,  in  the  bending  of  our  force  uiitj  what  is 
not  in  force,  and  we  feel  ourselves  blt-ssed  J»nd 
exalted  in  the  geniality  and  conscious  plaasurc  of 
our  homages.  We  observe  a  common  looting  n,  an, 
for  example,  standing  in  a  railroad  car,  that  a 
common  looking  woman  may  sit,  and  \\e  say  in- 
wardly, at  least,  if  not  audibly,  u  there  is  vet,  after 
all,  some  hope  of  the  world."  Now  it  is  not  to  tie, 
perhaps,  that  that  said  woman  is  doing  any  thing 
specially  on  that  said  man,  unless  by  a  certain 
grace  of  thanks  which  beams  in  her  eye — prob&bly 
he  knows  nothing  about  her,  and  has  never  felt, 
and  never  will,  any  quality  that  she  has ;  and  yet 
he  is  doing  for  himself  upon  her  what  will  repay 
his  inconveniences  a  hundred  times  over.  And 
these  beautiful  deferences  and  homages  paid  to 
women  are  the  very  best  civilizers  we  have,  and 
we  can  better  afford  to  spare  almost  any  thing 
else.  They  are  no  mere  by-play,  or  fancy-play  as, 


THE  EEFOEM  AGAINST  NATUBE.       161 

many  foolishly  think,  but  they  are,  in  fact,  strong, 
shaping  powers,  that  are  forming  the  manners,  and 
fining  the  grain,  and  raising  in  fact  the  very  con- 
sciousness of  our  sex.  Does  any  one  believe  that 
women  standing  for  equality,  asking  no  more  for 
any  thing  but  to  measure  powers  with  us,  pro- 
testing that  they  want  no  patronage,  and  consent- 
ing to  let  us  have  our  courtesies  to  ourselves,  if 
only  they  may  set  their  equal  manhood  alongside 
of  us — does  any  one  miss  perceiving  the  immense 
loss  we  must  suffer,  and  how  it  carries  off  with  it 
all  the  highest  flavors  of  our  life.  Selfishness, 
barbarism,  aridity — what  but  these  are  left,  when 
every  beautiful  courtesy  we  loved  to  pay  to  women 
is  dead  1 

And  there  is  a  loss  upon  the  other  side  that  is 
scarcely  less  deplorable.  When  a  woman  has  set 
herself  Up  for  a  practical  dittoship  with  men,  re- 
fusing to  accept  the  name  of  her  husband,  or  have 
any  but  a  partnership  relation  with  him,  she  ceases 
so  far  to  be  woman  at'  all.  She  has  no  longer  the 
trusting  nature,  she  despises  it,  she  neither  idolizes 
nor  idealizes  her  husband.  She  has  no  homages 
looking  up,  any  more  than  he,  in  his  ranges  of 
force,  has  courtesies  to  pay  her  looking  down.  \ 
He  is  gruff,  and  she  is  pungent,  and  the  main  sen- 
sibility of  life  is  the  friction  of  it.  She  has  gotten 
now  a  right  to  vote,  and  a  right,  if  she  can,  to  get 
office ;  and  has  it  for  the  chief  congratulation  of 
her  new  state  that  she  is  now  one  of  the  world's 


162  WOMEN'S  SUFFEAGE; 

combatant  forces.  Hereafter  she  fights  on  her 
own  hook,  and  will  be  as  much  a  man  as  she  likes ; 
or,  what  is  more  probable,  as  much  a  man  as  she 
can  be.  The  beauty  of  her  womanly  state  and 
feeling,  all  the  dear  specialties  of  wifehood  are 
gone  by,  and  she  takes  her  life  no  more  in  senti- 
ments, but  in  ostrich-like  rampages  over  the  desert 
she  is  left  to  occupy. 

It  can  not  be  so,  I  perceive,  to  many,  but  to 
me  these  sexhood  qualities  of  variation,  this  dove- 
tailing of  sentiment  by  unlikeness  of  kind,  so  by 
deferences,  homages,  admirations,  worships,  do- 
ings in  excess  of  right,  and  estimations  in  excess 
of  merit,  is  the  very  fairest  side  of  all  fair  beauty 
in  the  world.  There  is  a  delicate  hand  and  a 
rough,  strong  hand ;  there  is  a  voice  above  an- 
swered by  a  voice  in  octave  below ;  there  is  an  in- 
door life  and  quality,  and  an  out-door  that  will 
have  concern  with  the  world ;  what  each  is,  the 
other  wants,  and  they  both  get  away  from  the 
mere  stale  fact  of  what  they  are,  by  idolizing  each 
other,  playing  at  or  into  all  diversities,  and  all  di- 
versities into  more  and  better.  Call  it  the  state 
of  inequality,  if  we  please ;  it  is  yet  such  inequality 
that  no  one  knows  in  which  the  superiority  may 
be.  It  is  that  state  composed  by  complementary 
inequalities  which  we  can  least  afford  to  lose ;  and 
if  there  is  any  thing  over  which  the  word  accursed 
can  be  fitly  written,  it  is  over  the  remorseless, 
mock-equalizing,  that  is  going  to  make  so  many 


THE  EEFOEM  AGAINST  NATURE.       163 

peas,  or  flaxseeds  of  human  people  grow  into  the 
same  exact  figure,  and  be,  in  every  two,  the  double, 
each,  of  the  other.  I  see  nothing  but  starvation  in 
that  kind  of  equality ;  and  we  all  shall  know  it 
thus,  with  regrets  unspeakable,  after  this  proposed 
reform  has  been  long  enough  carried  to  prove 
what  is  in  it.  Looking  back,  as  we  shall,  from 
such  a  condition  attained,  on  our  present  state  of 
interplay — boldness  and  modesty,  governing  and 
trust,  the  fresh  delectations  and  varieties  weaving 
our  web  of  life — it  will  even  seem  to  be  a  kind  of 
paradise,  though  it  be  a  paradise  under  evil.  If 
any  thing  indeed  remains  to  be  lost  by  a  second 
fall,  it  will  be  our  exclusion  irom  this  evil-tainted 
paradise,  by  the  very  dismal  kind  of  society  against 
nature,  and  equality  in  one  color,  which  it  is  here 
proposed  to  create. 


164  WOMEN'S  SUFFRAGE; 


YIII. 

PROSPECTS  AND  POSSIBILITIES  OF  WOMEN. 

To  have  been  confronted,  in  the  argument  ^' 
this  question,  by  some  treatise  or  discussion  that 
deliberately  stated  and  expounded  the  speculative 
doctrine  of  the  side  opposite,  would  have  been  a 
considerable  help.  But  unfortunately  the  debate, 
if  such  it  can  be  called,  has  hitherto  been  carried 
on  by  extempore  speeches,  popular  magazine  ar- 
ticles, and  brief  random  effusions  of  the  press,  that 
were  concerned,  first  of  all,  to  fulfill  the  conditions 
of  piquancy,  and  not  to  unfold  the  solid  reason  of 
the  question.  Hence  it  has  been  difficult,  to  be 
sure  that  the  mode  of  exposition  here  attempt- 
ed was  going  to  meet  any  sufficiently  deliberative 
opinion  held,  in  respect  to  the  rational  grounds  of 
the  reform  proposed.  For  this  reason  I  have  been 
hoping,  partly  waiting,  for  the  forthcoming  book 
promised  by  Mr.  Mill.  But  it  does  not  yet  arrive. 

It  is  understood  that  he  takes  the  side  of  the 
proposed  reform,  as  he  naturally  enough  would 
tinder  his  particular  bent  of  philosophy  ;  for  it  is 
not  his  manner  to  have  any  principal  respect  to 


THE   REFORM   AGAINST   NATURE.  165 

categories,  absolute  properties,  or  laws  of  kind 
that  are  immovable,  but  to  see  all  things,  even 
the  distinctions  of  morality,  developed  and  shaped 
by  the  contingent,  variable  operations  of  experi- 
ence. "What,  in  this  view,  is  a  woman,  but  a  man 
kept  down  or  badly  hindered,  or  somehow  insuffi- 
ciently developed  ?  And  then  what  else  are  we 
to  think  of,  but  the  higher  development  she  will 
attain  to,  when  her  equal  rights  in  the  state  are 
acknowledged,  and  her  equal  opportunity  in  pub- 
lic life  is  secured  ?  The  title  of  his  book,  there- 
fore, as  I  think  I  have  somewhere  seen,  is  "The 
Subject  Condition  of  Women"  Under  which  it 
will  naturally  be  held,  as  by  Mrs.  Mill  in  her  some- 
what noted  article  in  the  Westminster  Review, 
that  the  subject  state  of  women,  down  to  this  time, 
is  due  in  no  sense  to  a  subject  nature,  but  wholly 
to  matters  conditional.  Indeed  the  precise  issue 
between  us  here,  which  I  am  quite  willing  to  ac- 
cept, is  whether  woman  is  subject  as  having  a 
subject  nature,  or  subject  as  being  held  down  by 
politically  oppressive  conditions  ?  If  the  former, 
she  is  not  going  of  course  to  be  helped  over  and 
by  her  nature,  and  raised  up  thus  into  forwardness 
and  a  way  of  command — she  will  be  subject  still, 
even  if  she  is  set  in  the  Presidency,  and  will 
govern  only  as  a  subject  nature  can.  If  the  latter, 
she  will  as  certainly  not  be  raised  into  a  manly, 
governing  way,  because  she  has  no  capacity  of 
being  thus  raised  by  any  conditions  whatever. 


166 

No  conceivable  improvement  in  her  social  and 
political  conditions  will  bring  her  up  into  the 
force-element  and  make  her  a  self-centered,  gov- 
erning, driving-engine  character — which  appears 
to  be  the  kind  of  merit  aspired  to.  Her  conditions 
will  not  create  a  man's  nerve  in  her,  but  she  will 
only  have  a  woman's  still  as  now,  and  the  very 
development  into  which  she  is  pushed  will  be  a 
woman's  development,  as  far  as  it  is  any  thing. 
Rightly  developed  she  will  be  a  mere  complete 
woman,  but  not  a  whit  less  subject,  or  a  whit  more 
nearly  even  with  man,  in  that  which  belongs  to 
his  particular  kind  of  eminence. 

It  is  remarkable,  when  so  much  is  made  or  to 
be  made,  of  condition,  that  it  does  not  occur  to 
reformers  who  take  this  mode  of  argument,  to 
ask  why  it  is,  from  the  creation  downward,  that 
women  have  fallen  into  a  condition  of  so  great  dis- 
advantage ?  Perhaps  they  will  say,  as  they  often 
do  when  their  point  is  to  raise  an  accusation,  and 
not  to  account  for  the  fact  referred  to,  that  man 
was  endued  originally  with  greater  strength  of 
person,  or  superior  physical  force,  and  that  he  has 
trampled  woman,  in  this  manner,  because  he  could, 
and  shut  her  down  under  conditions  of  great  inca- 
pacity and  discouragement.  And  this  undoubt- 
edly is  true,  or  at  least  far  more  widely  and  sadly 
true  than  it  should  be,  though  not  so  entirely  or 
totally  true  as  to  exclude  the  fact  that  such  supe- 
rior strength  is  loving,  none  the  less,  among  every 


THE  REFOKM  AGAINST  NATURE.       167 

people  of  the  world,  to  bow  itself  to  such  inferior, 
in  beautiful  acts  of  championship  and  protection, 
securing  thus  to  women  a  condition  of  comfort  and 
respect  they  could  never  secure  for  themselves. 
But  if  we  let  the  case  be  as  bad  as  this  kind  of 
argument  supposes,  and  take  it  as  the  fact  of  his- 
tory that  women  have  been  everywhere  oppressed 
by  the  superior  force  of  men,  this  at  least  will  be 
clear,  as  conceded  by  the  argument  itself,  that 
men  originally  had  this  gift  or  endowment  of  a 
larger  stature  and  a  far  superior  muscular  force. 
It  -may  not  be  any  very  high  distinction,  but  such 
as  it  is  they  have  it,  and  in  having  it  are  men. 
Besides,  in  this  more  massive  and  crude  sort  of 
endowment,  we  are  to  see  that,  as  they  are  in  force, 
so  their  force  is  the  housing  and  expression  of  their 
natural  authority.  It  signifies  government,  or 
governing  capacity  and  order,  and  just  as  impres- 
sively the  relatively  subject  nature  of  women. 
And  so  we  come  out  in  the  discovery  that  women, 
after  all,  are  in  a  subject  nature,  and  not  merely  in 
a  subject  condition — they  are  relatively  frail  and 
delicate,  in  a  finer  type  of  grace  and  color,  a  less 
coarse,  stormy  voice,  and  with  a  different  innerv- 
ing  quality  which  is  distinctively  feminine.  And 
this  we  may  think  it  more  respectful  to  call  the 
subject  condition  of  women  and  not  the  subject 
nature,  though  if  we  mean  to  thoroughly  under- 
stand ourselves,  how  far  off  is  it  from  being,  in 
any  view  possible,  a  subject  nature? 


168  WOMEN'S  SUFFRAGE  ; 

However,  there  can  be  very  few  thoughtful  per- 
sons, I  imagine,  who  are  not  sometimes  caught  with 
impressions  of  quality,  and  glimpses  of  possibility 
in  this  subject  nature,  that  are  exceedingly  high — 
shall  I  say,  transcendently  high  ?  But  a  few  even- 
ings since,  reclining  in  a  room  two  doors  removed 
from  the  parlor  where  two  young  friends  were 
having  their  good  time,  in  the  pleasant  conversa- 
tion of  a  call,  I  was  caught  by  a  strange  feeling  of 
surprise,  in  the  simple  overhearing  of  their  sounds, 
when  I  could  not  distinguish  a  word  of  their  utter- 
ance. The  male  voice  went  off  with  a  thud,  as  if 
there  were  some  center  point  of  self  assertion 
whence  it  issued,  and  some  base  line  of  purpose 
along  which  the  missile  was  to  go.  It  varied  a 
little,  but  only  a  little  in  pitch,  and  went  ranging 
along  the  lower  lines  of  the  stave,  not  as  if  there 
were  quaverings  of  sensibility  in  it,  but  as  if  it 
were  a  solid,  going  straight  by  its  own  momentum. 
There  was  energy  in  it,  and  it  raised  the  sense  of 
will  and  of  power,  but  the  reverberative  guttural, 
or  pectoral,  was  not  of  a  specially  winsome  quality, 
for  the  drive  there  was  in  it  was  just  a  little  undi- 
vine.  At  any  rate  nobody  is  going  back  of  it,  to 
put  any  shred  of  better  meaning,  or  note  of  better 
music  into  it.  It  begins  from  itself,  and  is  going  to 
have  its  way.  Meantime  the  other  voice,  how 
supremely  better  and  how  beautifully  turned  !  It 
is  modesty  and  gentle  deference  converted  into 
sound.  It  rises  and  waves  and  carols  and  goes 


THE    KEFOBM    AGAINST    NATURE.  169 

fluting  and  caracoling  round  the  other,  over  and 
under,  even  as  a  vine  might  spin  its  graces  and 
benignities  about  a  rock.  It  is  as  if  some  better 
nature  had  arrived  from  some  better,  more  unself- 
ish world,  and  were  trying,  in  what  manner  it  can, 
to  gain  the  grim  monotone  force,  and  twist  some 
charm  of  heaven's  music  into  its  feeling.  Perhaps, 
if  the  words  had  been  audible,  a  very  different 
impression  would  have  been  taken,  but  the  mere 
sounds  themselves  were  saying,  as  it  seemed, — 
"  this  for  you,  not  for  myself." 

This  now  is  the  subject  nature,  and  the  other  is 
the  forward  governing  nature  ;  and  the  promise  of 
our  new  reform  is  that,  if  the  woman  can  but  find 
a  better  and  more  equal  condition  in  the  world  of 
political  scramble,  and  so  be  duly  developed,  she 
will  make  as  high  a  creature,  well  nigh,  as  the 
other  !  I  see  nothing  to  attract,  I  confess,  in  that 
kind  of  promise.  On  the  contrary  it  seems  quite 
impossible  to  keep  off  the  conviction  of  some 
latent  property  in  the  woman,  that  will  some  time 
place  her  far  above  the  coarse,  crass,  self-will  pre- 
cedence in  which  the  masculine  vigor  is  thought  to 
be  so  impressively  displayed.  On  this  ground,  I 
object  most  emphatically  to  any  stirring  up  of  dis- 
content in  women  with  their  lot.  It  is  simple 
cruelty,  for  their  lot  is  at  bottom,  their  own  nature 
itself-^-that  and  nothing  else.  And  it  is  a  nature 
glorious  in  its  beauty,  which  they  can  not  afford  to 
infringe  by  any  disrespect,  and  should  most  con- 
8 


170  WOMEN'S  SUFFRAGE; 

sen tingl j  accept  and  hopefully  cultivate.  A  dis- 
contented woman  quarreling  with  her  womanhood, 
which  neither  she  nor  all  angels  can  change,  nor 
any  good  angel  could  even  wish  to  change — what 
thing  more  wretched,  and  wicked,  and  weak,  and 
absurd  can  well  be  conceived.  True  it  is  a  subject 
nature,  but  it  is  the  most  honorable,  finest,  highest 
nature,  in  many  of  its  qualities  and  capabilities  it 
has  ever  been  given  us  to  know. 

It  seems  to  me  that  we  are  quite  blind  as  yet 
to  the  true  sphere  of  woman  and  the  possible  de- 
gree of  her  advancement,  and  that,  partly  for  this 
reason,  we  are  now  campaigning  to  get  her  out  of 
her  subject  condition  as  we  call  it,  and  make  a 
man  of  her.  We  tell  her  that  she  belongs  to  the 
"  Suppressed  Sex,"  and  we  really  think  so — just 
because  we  have  not  learned  as  yet  to  think  any 
thing  better  and  higher  ourselves.  We  do  not 
perceive  the  vast  woman-field  she  is  filling  and 
to  sometime  fill,  with  a  luster  wholly  her  own ; 
which,  too,  she  must  just  so  far  abandon,  as  she  be- 
gins to  emulate  the  masculine  spheres  and  aspire 
to  the  masculine  offices.  Let  us  see,  if  we  can, 
whether  women  can  stay  by  their  womanhood  and 
have  any  true  great  hope  in  it. 

It  may  be  true  that  we  hear  enough  said  of  the 
motherhood  office  and  the  immense  practical  im- 
port of  it.  A  very  dull  wit  can  expatiate  en  this 
theme,  and  we  are  dosed  adnauseum,  as  we  some- 
times think,  with  this  prosing  kind  of  sentiment. 


THE  EEFORM  AGAINST  NATURE.       171 

But  there  is  a  magnificent  maternal  honor  incorpo- 
rate here,  which  I  do  not  remember  ever  to  have 
seen  mentioned,  and  which  ought  to  give  all  wom- 
en an  immensely  good  opinion  of  the  womanly 
nature,  subject  though  it  be.  I  look  upon  it,  I  con- 
fess, with  even  a  kind  of  awe.  It  is  not  a  self-assert- 
ing but  a  naturally  worshipful  and  client  nature, 
that  delights  to  sink  itself  out  of  sight  and  so  far  to 
be  in  another ;  and  in  just  this  fact  it  is  elected  to 
be  the  nurse  of  the  world's  childhood.  As  the  world 
is  selfish,  and  the  child,  doing  every  best  thing  for 
it,  is  likely  to  be  hopelessly  devoured  by  that  kind 
of  frenzy,  unless  the  mitigations  derivable  from 
some  more  benignant  element  may  save  it,  in  a 
degree,  for  God's  better  occupancy — for  this  rea- 
son, all  motherhood  is  gathered  about  all  child- 
hood in  a  subject  nature,  to  be  a  kind  of  first  gos- 
pel in  the  flesh,  and  savor  it,  as  it  were,  before- 
hand. The  child  is  born  into  the  lap  of  a  covert, 
gladly  worshipful  motherhood  ;  drinks  in  patience, 
reverence,  subordination,  to  the  one  idea  of  the 
family  headship,  and  is  so  to  be  partially  config- 
ured to  the  grand  moral  headship  of  the  Supreme 
Father.  And  hence  it  is  that  motherhoods  obtain 
such  ineradicable,  inexpugnable  possession  of  the 
life  of  sons  and  daughters.  Fathers  have  a  certain 
power  and  are  held  in  dear  respect.  But  it  is  the 
subject  nature  of  motherhood,  the  patient,  self- 
forgetting  element  it  makes,  that  fastens  a  feeling 
so  deep  in  the  child.  If  these  mothers  were  all 


172 

out  as  campaigners,  intriguers,  and  would-be 
statesmen,  it  would  not  cost  their  sons  a  great  deal 
of  trouble  to  forget  them.  After  this  new  dispen- 
sation arrives,  when  party  cabal  and  the  intrigues 
of  selfish  ambition  become  the  proper  element  of 
women,  the  wayward  sons  will  no  more  be  teth- 
ered, as  now,  to  good,  by  the  remembrances  of  their 
almost  divine  motherhood. 

We  very  commonly  imagine,  when  we  speak  of 
dress  as  one  of  the  rather  weak  foibles  of  women, 
that  there  is  or  can  be  no  dignity  or  high  value 
in  it.  There  certainly  is  an  abundant  show  of 
nonsense,  and  sometimes  of  a  most  real  and  con- 
temptible selfishness,  in  what  is  called  fashion. 
And  if  our  beautiful  sisterhood  want  to  conquer 
their  emancipation  from  a  great  and  terrible  thrall- 
dom,  here  is  their  opportunity.  To  get  emanci- 
pated from  men,  or  the  political  sovereignly  of 
men  in  the  State,  is  a  very  small  matter  and  a 
victory  quite  insignificant,  compared  with  this. 
And  if  they  greatly  admire  the  masculine  nerve 
displayed  in  public  affairs,  let  them  understand 
that  very  many  men  have  not  the  nerve  to  defy 
or  cast  off  a  fashion ;  so  that  if  they  are  resolute 
and  brave  enough  to  conquer,  in  this  kind  of  bat- 
tle, they  can  do  what  many  great  commanders 
never  were  able.  And  exactly  this  huge  overthrow 
must  some  time  hence  be  carried ;  for  it  is  the 
weakest,  most  despotic,  and  cruel  kind  of  empire 
ever  endured  by  mortals.  The  day  is  coming — 


THE   EEFOEM   AGAINST   NATURE.  173 

let  our  women  see  that  it  is  duly  hastened — when 
taste  will  be  so  far  advanced  as  to  be  the  supreme 
arbiter  of  dress  in  every  person.  Dress  will  then 
be  seen  to  be  just  what  it  is :  viz.,  a  fine  art  of  the 
highest  order,  and  related  even  to  the  supreme 
beauty  of  all  character.  Who  of  us  have  not  seen 
examples  of  just  this  wonderful  kind  of  beauty  ?  It 
shows  the  sense  of  fitness,  or  properness,  to  be  su- 
preme, and  reveals  the  internal  mode  of  a  beauti- 
ful soul  by  just  that  which  is  the  natural  outgo 
of  expression.  Such  is  dress.  Is  there  any  thing 
finer,  lovelier,  more  fascinating,  and,  in  Tact,  more 
indicative  of  the  great  possible  advance  to  be 
made,  when  the  souls  and  characters  of  women 
get  in  grace  and  culture  enough  for  such  a  kind 
of  excellence.  Here  is  nothing  gotten  up  by  the 
cheap  methods  of  shop-women  studying  their 
cards.  Here  is  no  dash  of  diamonds  a  half  mil- 
lion strong,  the  tricking  of  a  dowdy,  or  the  shower 
of  glitter  in  which  a  really  fair  woman  dissolves 
her  beauty  and  makes  a  nothing  of  it ;  but  there  is 
modesty,  there  is  figure  that  appears  to  have  come 
of  itself,  the  draperies  and  colors  are  all  fit — right 
in  quantity,  right  in  limitation — because  there 
was  character  and  culture  enough  to  bring  just 
this  to  pass  without  knowing  it. 

Giving  such  an  estimate  of  dress,  and  its  im- 
portance in  the  scale  of  human  advancement,  I 
may  seem  to  hold  an  egregious  opinion  of  its  value. 
But  it  must  be  remembered,  first,  that  what  we 


174  WOMEN'S  SUFFRAGE; 

now  call  dress,  and  deprecate  as  extravagance,  is 
not  dress  at  all — only  a  very  few  persons  know 
what  dress  really  means,  or  how  it  comes,  and  we 
have  but  the  faintest  ideas  therefore  of  that  high 
figure,  in  which  the  true  society  of  the  world  is 
some  time  to  appear.  And  again,  secondly,  we 
must  not  forget  that  there  is  a  most  intimate  and 
living  connection  between  dress  on  one  hand, 
and  manners  and  society  on  the  other.  The  forms 
of  appearing  and  action  include  the  article  of 
dress,  with  its  true  refinements  and  proprieties,  in 
common  with  all  that  belongs  to  personal  beha- 
vior and  to  the  general  way  and  manner  of  society. 
And  here  it  is  that  woman  has  her  kingdom.  Sub- 
ject in  the  state,  she  is  qualified,  in  just  that  fact, 
to  be  the  queen  of  society.  And  is  society  nothing, 
do  we  think?  Are  there  no  honors  and  powers 
and  quantities  of  well-being  here  at  stake?  Why, 
there  is  more  to  be  determined,  legislated,  done, 
enjoyed,  and  lost,  in  this  great  matter  of  society, 
than  there  is  in  all  the  enactments,  executive  offi- 
ces, and  judicial  decisions  of  the  state,  many 
times  over.  Is  it  then  to  be  imagined  that  the 
world-famous  women,  the  Miss  Marshalls,  the 
Mrs.  Madisons,  the  Madame  Eecamiers,  the  Ma- 
dame Swetchines,  and  a  thousand  other  queens 
that,  being  good  or  less  good,  gather  princes  and 
multitudes  about  the  queenly  centers  they  make 
and  the  beautiful  graces  in  which  they  shine,  are, 
in  fact,  doing  nothing  for  their  country  or  man- 


THE  REFORM  AGAINST  NATURE.       175 

kind  ?  Just  contrary  to  this,  it  is  they,  even  more 
than  the  male  magistracies,  that  are  fashioning 
the  world.  Aspasia  is  more  than  Pericles  a  hun- 
dred times  over;  because  he  governs  only  the 
state,  and  she  governs  both  the  governors  of  the 
state  and  the  people  beside.  Happy  is  that  people 
that  can  make  society.  Lacedemon  could  as  lit- 
tle make  it  as  a  den  of  bears.  Athens  could  have 
it  because  it  had  a  woman.  Great  thing  it  is  for 
any  people  that  they  can  have  society ;  thought 
ennobled,  art  become  a  joy,  good  and  pure  man- 
ners, lofty  and  true  sentiment,  delicacy,  beauty, 
great  aspirations,  a  state  above  the  state,  that 
which  no  man  ever  made  or  swayed,  but  which 
only  women,  one  or  many,  could.  It  requires  just 
what  we  have  been  calling  a  subject  nature  to  pre- 
pare society.  There  are  no  kings  here  but  only 
queens.  All  partisans  and  men  of  power  are 
incapable  of  this  kind  of  dominion.  It  supposes 
what  is  more  catholic,  another  law  moving  in  an- 
other line,  where  truth,  and  right,  and  beauty, 
and  right  inspirations,  and  manners  that  have 
come  to  the  flower,  create  a  new,  great  element  of 
general  fellowship,  and  true  public  love. 

We  are  trying,  just  now  every  possible  or  im- 
possible way  of  reducing  our  public  vices,  and 
especially  our  all-demoralizing  drink.  The  state 
fairly  staggers  politically  under  the  problem,  find- 
ing no  way.  JNTo  way,  I  fear,  is  ever  coming  by 
the  legislative,  "  be-it-enacted"  method.  But 


176  WOMEN'S  SUFFKAGE  ; 

what  the  state  can  not  do,  society  can  ;  and  society 
will  do  it,  whenever  the  great  women  arise  to 
make  society  in  that  high  key.  And  they  will  do 
it  by  no  denunciatory  action ;  but  by  simply 
making  a  right,  clean  atmosphere,  which  no  beast 
can  willingly  defile;  consecrating  character  by 
its  dignities,  life  by  its  moralities,  and  putting  all 
the  elegancies  in  cast,  by  good  and  true  inspira- 
tions. Only  the  subject  condition  can  address  it- 
self to  these  ignominies  of  life.  Legal  prohibitions, 
fines,  imprisonments,  have  only  such  remedial  ef- 
ficacy as  God's  own  law  has  had  in  the  mending 
of  transgression. 

It  has  never  yet  been  sufficiently  seen  what 
stores  of  poetry  are  hid  in  the  light-moving,  ten- 
derly-fibered,  subject  nature  of  women.  The  bane 
of  all  great  poetry  is  self-recollection,  and  the 
letting  in  of  will  to  do  what  only  true  inspirations 
can.  And  exactly  here  is  the  point  where  so 
many  breaks  and  falls  occur.  The  man  ventures, 
in  some  unlucky  moment,  to  make  his  appearance 
himself — putting  in  his  force  to  conquer,  when 
force  has  no  such  power.  His  performance  gets  a 
spacing,  in  this  manner,  of  insipidities  and  little 
defections,  that  more  or  less  fatally  take  him 
down.  His  will,  in  fact,  even  though  he  may  not 
see  it,  is,  poetically  speaking,  the  weakest,  lowest 
faculty  he  has.  But  as  men  expect  to  govern  by 
their  will,  and  do  many  things  in  the  habit  of  put- 
ting their  will  into  them,  it  will  be  all  the  more 


THE  REFORM  AGAINST  NATURE.       177 

difficult  not  to  fall  sometimes  into  the  way  of 
manufacturing  verses,  when  they  think  they  are 
writing  poetry.  Is  it  not  a  matter  of  fair  expecta- 
tion that,  when  the  women  of  an  age  not  far  off, 
find  where  the  inspirations  are,  and  set  their  nim- 
ble, fine-strung  harps  in  play,  they  will  give  us 
modes  of  thought  and  sentiment  and  wonders  of 
perception,  more  ethereal  and  closer  to  the  living 
fiber  of  souls  than  we  have  hitherto  known  ?  The 
very  fact  that  women  are  in  a  smaller  and  more 
delicate  key,  will  permit  their  wings  to  carry  them 
higher,  and  will  let  us  hear  them  empty  their  music 
into  the  sky,  clear  above  where  our  male  larks 
and  eagles  have  been  able  in  the  past  times  to  go. 
And  let  not  this  appear  extravagant,  for  our  wom- 
en certainly  have  not  yet  found  their  wings.  Are 
we  not  able  to  see,  by  a  mere  glance  of  the  eye, 
that  they  have  a  nature  fibered  and  feathered  for 
the  highest  inspirations,  whenever  they  can  think 
and  believe,  in  a  key  to  reach  their  own  possi- 
bilities ? 

These  auguries  will  be  largely  confirmed,  if  we 
advert  to  the  closely  kindred  art  of  music.  "Why 
is  it,  we  may  ask,  that  men's  voices,  larger  in 
quantity  and  sometimes  wonderfully  fine  in  qual- 
ity, are  yet  never  able  to  produce  the  same  or  any 
proximate  effects  compared  with  the  voices  of 
women?  Not  all  the  kings  and  queens  of  the  old 
world,  with  all  the  high  magistrates  of  the  new, 
had  more  than  a  hundredth  part  of  the  impression, 

8* 


178 

accent,  sway  in  men's  feeling,  that  a  single  singing 
woman  lately  had,  in  the  memory  of  us  all.  ~No 
such  power  was  ever  held  by  any  singing  man,  or 
ever  will  be.  And  the  reason  is  not,  as  we 
assume  so  often,  that  the  soprano  voice  is  of 
course  more  effective.  No ;  the  true  reason  is 
that  the  man  lets  himself  into  his  singing,  forces 
his  voice,  puts  his  will  into  the  modulations,  and 
lets  us  see  that  he  is,  all  the  while,  conscious  of 
what  he  is  doing.  Having  thunders  of  govern- 
ment and  self-centered  energy  in  him,  he  must 
needs  play  on  his  voice,  and  finger,  as  it  were,  the 
stops  of  it  himself.  Many  times  it  will  be  even 
visible  that,  having  the  finest  possible  organ,  he 
never  once  caught  the  idea  of  an  inspiration,  or  a 
free  gale  wafting  him  on,  in  his  life.  He  sings 
velocipede- wise,  turning  the  crank  himself.  If 
there  is  a  liquid  element  in  his  nature,  he  has 
never  let  his  heart  down  where  it  is,  but  he  sings 
a  song  of  surfaces  by  his  will,  and  the  self-modu- 
lation of  his  art — very  dry,  made  up  of  single  notes 
and  pieces  jolted  together  without  flow.  But 
the  woman  has  a  better  nature  for  this  matter.  She 
is  less  supremely,  less  indivertibly  selfish.  Her 
subject  will  is  not  always  on  hand,  to  put  her  fuss- 
ing consciously  at  her  modulations.  She  takes  the 
inspirations  easily  and  without  knowing  it,  and  has 
the  tingle  of  the  sentiment  in  her  whole  person. 
Grace,  beauty,  life,  love,  beam  and  glow  and 
blend  and  rise,  and  her  audiences  are  carried  away, 


THE   KEFOKM   AGAINST   NATUKE.  179 

they  scarce  know  whither.  Is  there  any  greater 
eminence  of  power  in  any  political  magistracy,  or 
official  promotion  of  the  world  ?  And  if  we 
take  these  two  together,  poetry  and  music,  and 
consider  the  grand  possibilities  of  advancement 
offered  thereby  to  the  genius  of  women — possi- 
bilities never  yet  unfolded  as  they  sometimes  will 
be — we  shall  not  be  in  haste  to  set  them  on  riots 
of  appeal  to  conquer  places  that  will  give  signifi- 
cance to  their  life.  Had  Alboni  been  able  to-  get 
herself  installed  in  the  Intendancy  of  the  Revenue 
of  Ancona,  or  Jenny  Lind  to  get  the  place  of 
Port  Warden  at  Gotten  burg,  I  do  not  see  that 
their  political  successes  would  have  done  much 
for  them. 

There  is  yet  another  vast  field  of  endeavor  for 
women  which  ought  to  be  taken  directly  out  of 
politics,  or  the  hands  of  legislation,  and  given 
over  to  them.  Dr.  Chalmers  saw  the  unspeakable 
absurdity  of  what  we  call  our  Almshouse  system, 
and  set  himself  to  the  replacing  of  it  by  agencies 
more  genuine.  Hospitals  ought  to  follow  the 
same  law  ;  and  finally  when  every  thing  is  ready, 
the  Common  School  arrangement  also. 

All  these,  together  with  what  may  be  done  for 
the  mitigation  of  war,  and  the  correction  of  war- 
like sentiment,  belong  not  t°  the  state  or  to 
political  management,  but  to  the  mercies  and  be- 
nignities, and  faithful  charities  of  private  life,  and 
particularly  the  private  life  of  women.  The  state 


180 

is  given  to  men  ;  these  comprehend  a  vast  circle 
of  powers  and  causes,  almost  equally  extended, 
that  belong  especially  to  women.  We  speak,  for 
example,  of  our  Almshouse  provisions — there 
could  not  be  a  more  naked  lie ;  for  there  is  not 
even  a  shred  or  semblance  of  alms  in  the  case ;  noth- 
ing but  taxations  to  be  gathered  by  law,  and  paid 
over  by  legal  officers.  Not  a  feeling  of  mercy  is 
anywhere  appealed  to  or  felt.  Our  hospitals  and 
public  schools  are  now  getting  to  be  more  gen- 
erally supported  in  the  same  way.  Not  a  vestige 
of  benevolence  is  called  into  play ;  the  state  is 
managing  now,  not  in  a  way  to  dispense,  but 
to  dispense  with  benevolence  !  Our  men  are  not 
in  it,  because  they  are  doing  every  thing  politi- 
cally, or  by  law.  Our  women  can  not  be  in  it, 
because  it  is  taken  away.  And  so  we  lose  the 
benefit  of  a  whole  best  side  of  life.  Here  are 
ministrations,  teachings,  offices,  and  magistracies 
of  mercy  without  number,  all  a  great  deal  worthier 
and  higher  than  any  that  our  women  can  hope  to 
obtain  at  the  polls,  but  they  do  not  see  it.  And 
they  are  dying,  they  say,  because  they  have 
nothing  to  do! 

Is  it  not  time  that,  instead  of  going  after  these 
political  illusions,  we  begin  to  revise  the  great 
prime  falsity  arid  imposture  we  have  let  into  our 
practice.  I  do  not  say  that  our  present  alms- 
house  system,  as  we  call  it,  is  worse  and  more 
cruel  than  nothing,  but  it  is  the  most  mischievous 


THE   REFORM  AGAINST  NATURE.  181 

and  miserable  thing  we  have  borrowed  from  the 
mother  country,  most  false  in  principle  and 
worthiest  to  be  stripped  away.  We  have  certain 
benefits  from  our  common  schools,  but  we  are 
coming  down  rapidly  now  upon  the  fact,  that  no 
religion  can  be  taught,  and  not  even  a  religious 
morality,  because  it  will  infringe  on  some  mis- 
belief, or  variant  belief;  and  the  charge  that  was 
laid  by  the  Catholics  is  becoming  more  painfully 
just  every  year.  Had  our  women  every  thing  in 
train  here,  as  they  might  and  ought  to  have  had, 
all  these  modes  of  beneficence  would  now  be 
theirs,  and  they  might  even  be  complaining  that 
their  works  are  too  heavy  and  too  many. 

Of  course  it  will  be  seen,  that  when  our  Sis- 
ters of  Charity,  and  others  subject  to  the  monastic 
garb  and  discipline,  are  going  their  rounds  on  er- 
rands of  mercy,  they,  in  fact,  are  acting  under  law 
as  truly  as  they  would  be  under  the  laws  of  the 
state,  and  are  in  exactly  the  same  fault  of  principle 
we  deplore  in  ourselves. 

I  can  not  exhaust  this  matter  by  any  brief  dis- 
cussion, but  it  will  be  seen  at  a  glance,  how  vast 
a  field  is  open  here  to  women.  They  will  some- 
time have  it, — I  hope  not  a  very  long  time 
hence, — and  it  will  suffice  to  occupy  their  whole 
army. 

But  there  is  yet  one  thing  more  which  must  not 
be  omitted,  viz.  :  the  great  field  opened  for  them 
by  religion.  The  womanly  nature,  being  a  sub 


182  WOMEN'S  SUFFRAGE; 

ject  nature,  is  specially  flexible  and  free  to  the 
Christian  inspirations,  and  for  this  reason,  doubt- 
less, it  is  that  more  than  twice  as  many  women 
as  men  are  engaged  in  Christian  works  and  rela- 
tions. Yet  the  call  is  now  for  women  to  buckle  on 
the  harness  of  political  life  and  challenge  the  right 
to  fight  common  battles  with  men.  The  subject 
nature  is  now  to  be  adjourned,  and  the  self-willed, 
governing  nature  to  take  its  place ;  and  the  result 
will  be,  of  course,  that  only  half  as  many  women 
will  accept  the  cross,  because  they  too  are  learn- 
ing now  to  fight  out  their  will ;  and  the  count 
of  Christian  men  will  also  be  reduced,  because  the 
number  that  have  Christian  wives  who  have  grace 
to  win  their  husbands  is  reduced.  The  result  of 
course  will  be,  if  this  reform  is  carried,  that  the 
number  of  them  that  believe  will  be  greatly  di- 
minished, and  whole  centuries  of  toilsome  progress 
will  be  lost,  as  it  were,  in  a  clay.  And  yet  the 
bitterest,  heaviest  part  of  the  loss  will  fall  upon 
the  women  who  are  expected  to  be  the  chief  gain- 
ers in  so  great  a  change.  In  virtue  of  their  sub- 
ject nature,  they  now  hold  the  God  ward  side  of 
humanity,  which  is,  in  fact,  the  side  of  highest 
power;  and  abjuring  their  nature  they,  of  course, 
abjure  the  power.  Men  will  add  their  opinions  to 
religion,  even  as  rush-lights  may  be  added  to  the 
sun  ;  or  sometimes  they  will  flame  on  the  world  as 
prophets  gifted  with  revelations  that  have  no  very 
exact  keeping  with  the  merit  of  their  character, 


THE   EKFOKM    AGAINST   HATUKE.  183 

and  are  sometimes  a  prodigious  miracle  burst- 
ing up  through  manifold  obliquities.  Meantime 
women,  far  more  religious  in  their  habit,  are  never 
distinctly  set  in  the  prophetic  office,  though  some- 
times verbally  honored  in  the  prophetic  title, 
for  the  reason  simply,  it  would  seem,  that  they 
are  to  be  more  than  prophets,  viz. :  to  obtain 
acquaintance  with  God  in  the  higher  plane  of 
practical  sainthood,  and  spiritual  insight  on  the 
basis  of  experience.  So  they  are  to  take  their 
subject  nature  into  the  recesses  of  God's  friend- 
ship, and  have  it  there  imbued  with  all  under- 
standing in  the  private  mind  of  the  Spirit,  and 
are  so  to  be  known  as  knowing  God.  And  there 
is  no  other  character  so  divinely  impressive,  or  so 
beautifully  configured  to  God's  purity;  therefore 
none  that  is  gifted  with  a  power  so  transcendent. 

Thus  when  Madame  Guyon  draws  the  great 
Fenelon  to  her  confidence,  and  her  cell  in  the  pris- 
on; when  she  opens  to  him  her  conceptions  of 
God's  mysteries,  and  he,  in  faithful  homage  to  her 
cause  undertakes  for  her,  and  becomes  her  apolo- 
gist, accepting  her  openly  before  her  persecutors, 
what  do  we  see  in  this  impressive  sight,  but  that 
learning  and  fame  and  genius,  all  widest  influence 
and  highest  position,  will  come  to  pay  their  trib- 
ute to  the'  woman  who  has  found  God's  inspira- 
tions, and  entered  into  the  secret  of  his  will. 
"What  Joan  of  Arc  accomplished  is  scarcely  a 
greater  wonder.  And  thus  again  when  that  won- 


184: 

derful  daughter  of  God,  Madame  Krudner,  sought 
for  and  found  by  Alexander  of  Russia,  kneels 
with  him  side  by  side,  Protestant  with  Greek, 
night  after  night,  endeavoring  to  guide  him  through 
his  misgivings  into  the  great  future  God  will 
open  for  him  and  his  allies,  what  do  we  see,  in 
fact,  but  that  she  is  holding  sway,  in  simple  saint- 
hood, over  all  Europe,  including  the  great  Napo- 
leon himself.  These  of  course  are  extreme  cases. 
But  the  womanly  sainthood  power  ;s  always  doing 
this,  in  some  way  or  manner  less  conspicuous. 
And  the  time  is  coming,  if  there  is  enough  of  sub- 
ject nature  left,  when  it  will  be  crowned  in  the 
supreme  queenhood  of  the  world.  • 

My  object  now  in  this  brief,  closing  chapter, 
has  been  to  show  what  fields  of  great  endeavor 
and  high  public  sway,  what  opportunities  of  ad- 
vancement are  even  now  and  always  set  before 
the  women  of  the  nation.  They  are  saying,  and 
multitudes  of  men  are  conceding  the  fact  on  every 
hand,  that  they  must  get  vent  in  political  life  or 
die  for  want  of  any  thing  to  do.  My  fixed  con- 
viction is  that  no  such  thing  is  true.  Their  sub- 
ject nature,  which  is  called  their  subject  condi- 
tion, has  here  been  shown,  I  think,  to  contain  all 
the  grandest  possibilities  of  work  and  power  and 
character  that  could  or  can  be  given  them.  It  is 
in  fact  the  prime  endowment  of  their  womanhood 
itself. 


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NE^VCOMB,  REV.  H. 

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ORLEANS,  DUCHESS  OF. 

Memoirs  of  (Portrait)  ....         I        I2mo  86 

OWEN,  J.  J  ,  D.D. 

Commentaries  on  the  New  Testament :  Mat- 
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PRENTISS,  S.  S. 

Life  of,  by  Geo.  L.  Prentiss,  D.D. 

PRIME,  S.  I.,  D.D. 

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Life  of,  by  Professor  Geo.  P.  Fisher 

SIMMS,  W.  G. 

SMITH,  PROF.  H.  B.,  D.D. 

Christian  Church,  History  of,  in  Tabular  Form 

SMITH,  J.  H. 

Gilead  ;  or,  The  Vision  of  All  Souls'  Hospital 

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Triumphs  of  the  Bible 

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